The UC Davis School of Medicine MD program

I-EXPLORE is competency-based, with milestones for each phase in six graduation competency areas, from patient care to professionalism. Six threads run across courses: diagnostic medicine, including point-of-care ultrasound; stages of life, told through fictional families whose health changes over time; care for vulnerable populations; preventive medicine; pain medicine; and behavioral sciences.

Clinical reasoning is organized around the UCD 43, a set of 43 common chief concerns that bring patients to a doctor. You meet each at least once in team-based learning, building illness scripts and diagnostic schemas, mental frameworks for sorting causes, and refining a differential diagnosis, the list of possible causes, as findings come in.

From Molecular and Cellular Medicine onward, problem-based learning, team-based learning and peer teaching set the pattern for years 1 and 2. In the clerkship year you learn on wards and in clinics, and short intersessions between rotations keep science going.

The Pre-Clerkship Workload Policy, reviewed in May 2026, sets a standard week. Active learning sessions fill Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, 8 a.m. to noon, and a two-hour in-person quiz falls on a Tuesday or Thursday morning. Add up to 8 hours of lectures and 4 of clinical skills or clinic.

Contact time is capped at 26 hours a week, averaged over non-exam weeks. Counting an hour of study per contact hour plus up to 12 hours of assigned work, the week tops out at 64 hours; exam weeks drop to 44. Pathway activities should add no more than 5 hours.

• Attendance at everything is required from orientation until winter break of year 1.
• After that, problem-based learning, clinical skills, simulation, clinic, anatomy labs, patient panels and intersession passport activities stay required, with 2 personal days per 6 weeks of coursework.

Anatomy comes first: Human Architecture and Function (MDS 471), eight weeks long, opens the science courses. The UC Davis General Catalog lists its disciplines as gross anatomy, microscopic anatomy (normal histology), history-taking and examination skills, and health systems science. Required texts include Moore's Clinically Oriented Anatomy.

Anatomy labs are required sessions. The school's Gross Anatomy Teaching Laboratory, about 500 feet from the Education Building, has 24 cadaver tables. In the optional two-week Pre-Matriculation Program before year 1, faculty lead a lab visit using prosections, specimens already dissected to display their structures.

Donors come through the UC Davis Body Donation Program, set up in 1968, which has averaged about 150 donations a year since 2005. Its Service of Gratitude page says donors are often called students' first patient and teacher. Each year second-year students organize that service to honor donors, with reflections, letters and music; donors' families are invited.

Clinical skills begin in Human Architecture and Function. Your first objective structured clinical examination (OSCE), a circuit of timed stations where you are observed taking a history or examining a standardized patient, comes in late October of year 1.

The Longitudinal Clinical Experience (LCE) starts halfway through year 1 and runs a year. About one afternoon every other week you work in an outpatient clinic in the Sacramento region with the same preceptor; the program was built with more than 125 community physicians. You shadow at first, then interview and examine patients, and in year 2 practice diagnostic reasoning and presentations.

The travel policy says these clinic sessions can be up to 60 miles away each way, for up to 20 half days in each of years 1 and 2. Patient panels bring patients into class from year 1, and in Brain and Behavior, the last course of year 2, clinical skills adds inpatient work. The curriculum page counts 12 student-run clinics and the admissions page eight.

Under the school's bylaws, revised in May 2024, required pre-clerkship and clerkship courses are graded Pass or Fail, and post-clerkship courses Honors, Pass or Fail. A curriculum update says clerkships became pass/fail in 2023-24 after a grading-equity review, and the family medicine department calls its clerkship pass/fail. The UC Davis General Catalog still lists Honors, Pass or Fail for five core clerkships, all but pediatrics.

Pre-clerkship courses use low-stakes in-person quizzes, midterms and final exams in NBME format, with SPARK open-answer questions on systems-course finals, plus four OSCEs over years 1 and 2. Numerical scores are kept for advising, not shown on transcripts. A failing result first earns a provisional Y mark, with one remediation attempt; a failed remediation becomes an F, meaning you retake the course.

Clerkships grade you against competency milestones through supervisors' evaluations with narrative comments and an NBME subject exam, or shelf exam. The shelf exam falls on each rotation's last day, and clinical duties end at noon the day before. Each clerkship also gives documented midpoint feedback and checks your log of required patient encounters.

LCME accreditation makes you eligible to take the USMLE. Step 1 has been pass/fail since January 26, 2022; Step 2 CK has a three-digit score, with 218 to pass since July 1, 2025. You must finish the pre-clerkship courses before sitting Step 1, pass it before clerkships and pass Step 2 CK to graduate.

Five CBSE exams in year 2 set your Step 1 timing. Meet the threshold on one of the first three (50%, 55%, then 63%) and you sit Step 1 before Transition to Clerkships. Reach 63% on CBSE 4 or 5 instead and you start in Rotation 2 or 3. ACE-PC follows its own pilot policy. Step 2 CK is due by December 31 before a June graduation, ideally by August 31.

In August 2026 the USMLE program announced a move to designated testing dates from January 2029, with Step exams offered less often each year. Its June 2026 announcement had named 2028. No 2027-28 calendar is posted yet. On the current schedule, a July 2027 entrant would sit Step 1 around March or April 2029 and Step 2 CK in 2030, before a June 2031 graduation. Both would fall under designated testing dates.

• The Clinical Performance Examination (CPX) is an eight-station OSCE run with the California Consortium for the Assessment of Clinical Competence, mostly in May and June, after five of the six core clerkships. Results are Pass, Conditional Pass or No Pass; a No Pass means a six-station retake at least three months before graduation.
• A first Step failure brings academic warning and a second academic notice (formerly probation). A second F, a third Y or not passing Step 1 within two years of finishing year 2 can lead to a dismissal recommendation.

Your base is UC Davis Medical Center, with a Level I trauma center for adults and children. The travel policy says clinical training in all four years uses sites throughout Central and Northern California and Oregon. Required year 4 rotations can all be done at UC Davis, though some students will need outside sites.

Expect inpatient and outpatient clerkship sites up to 60 miles each way from the Sacramento campus, and farther for some rotations, depending on program aims and site availability. Distant sites go first to students who ask or volunteer, then by lottery. Students with dependents can request a travel exemption, but you cannot swap sites, and transport problems do not change an assignment.

You arrange your own transport. Financial aid includes a transportation budget, and the pathway pages say all students get a mileage stipend for sites more than 25 miles away. Pathway students get housing for distant clerkships, such as rural sites for Rural PRIME, the Central Valley for REACH and French Camp for the TEACH-MS OB-GYN clerkship.

Community Health Scholars start with a one-week orientation about three weeks before the standard one, then add class sessions once or twice a month, community immersion days and a summer elective. REACH (Reimagining Education to Advance Central California Health) and TEACH-MS (Transforming Education and Community Health for Medical Students) each set at least 24 weeks of clerkships in their communities. Rural PRIME sets at least 20.

You choose a pathway when you apply to the school, and each pathway selects its own students. The application page lists yearly places as 4 to 6 for PRIME Central Coast, 8 to 12 each for REACH and Rural PRIME, 8 for TEACH-MS and 4 to 6 for Tribal Health PRIME. The September 2026 handbook gives 6 for PRIME Central Coast, 6 to 8 for TEACH-MS and up to 6 for Tribal Health PRIME.

Choice starts in the summer after year 1, when I-FOSTER's block includes four weeks of selective coursework. Options include a research selective or seven-week research fellowship, a pathway elective, or Global Health choices such as Spanish immersion in Colombia.

Students in REACH, Rural PRIME, TEACH-MS and Tribal Health PRIME can add electives and community training in all four years through the COMET (California Oregon Medical Education and Training) Collaborative. Its partners serve rural and underserved communities across Northern California and Southern Oregon.

The year 3 selective block lets you combine 2- and 4-week courses or take one 6-week course: clinical selectives, research or scholarly concentration work, advanced clinical clerkships or clinical didactics. Specialties in Support of Adult Primary Care, for example, strings together three two-week rotations in specialties primary care doctors often refer to.

Year 4 offers more than 180 electives across UC Davis Health's clinical departments; psychiatry's include child psychiatry and an inpatient acting internship. You plan the year with your coach between December and March of year 3, enter it in eFlight, the scheduling system, and finalize it by September. No more than 8 weeks of one course count.

Many away rotations at other schools are booked through the Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO) service of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), at your own expense. They need department approval and must finish by the end of winter quarter of year 4. International rotations can count with committee approval.

The Center for Global Health lists elective sites in South Africa, Peru, India, Nepal and Vietnam, and One Health field courses run traditionally in East Africa and Sri Lanka.

The M.D./Ph.D. program is approved to admit five students a year (the handbook says four to five). You complete years 1 and 2, with a summer research rotation, and pass Step 1. You then spend about four years on a Ph.D. in any UC Davis graduate program, including the social sciences and humanities. You return for clerkships, with an optional two-week Clinical Refresher; most finish in eight years.

The dual degree page describes a joint five-year M.D. and Master of Public Health (M.D./M.P.H.) and names an M.D. with a Master of Business Administration (M.D./M.B.A.). For both, you apply separately once accepted to medical school. The M.P.H. is a 56-unit in-person program starting in August, with General Public Health or Epidemiology concentrations and a practicum. Its pages give its length as 10-12 months and as 12-14 months.

Planned extensions fit best between the clerkship and post-clerkship phases, after Step 2 CK and the CPX; the school strongly discourages breaks before clerkships. The school's research page describes the Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC) TL1 program as a year of research training, with the option of a Master of Advanced Study (M.A.S.) in Clinical Research. The CTSC's own page says TL1 scholars are funded for two years.

ARC-MD is a five-year honors pathway for future physician-scientists, whose research can be basic, clinical, community-engaged or implementation science. It accepts six to eight students a year (the handbook says five to eight). Year 3 brings a four-week research selective and a TL1 funding proposal, and year 4 a 12- to 16-week scholarly project.

Shorter research fits inside the M.D.: 4 or 7 weeks in the summer after year 1, part of the year 3 selective, or a year-long research elective in year 4. That elective ends with a paper and a poster at Poster Day, and research earns up to 8 weeks of credit.

Areas of Scholarly Concentration (ASCs) are optional: if you join one, in the fall of year 1, you add online modules, intersession activities and a capstone project. Themes are clinical or translational research, global health, health care policy and advocacy, medical education, and quality improvement and patient safety.

Teaching centers on the Education Building, completed in December 2006 with the F. William Blaisdell, M.D., Medical Library. It has two 150-seat auditoriums, a 60-seat case method room, 17 small-group rooms for 12 to 16 people and two student commons.

Its Clinical Skills Center has eight examination rooms with pan-and-zoom cameras and a central monitoring room, and records encounters for review. UC Davis Health's Center for Simulation and Education Enhancement supplies standardized patients. It runs a simulated hospital, with a resuscitation bay, operating room, ward and clinic, and a surgical simulation program accredited by the American College of Surgeons.

The Blaisdell library, open to UC Davis Health badge holders, has study rooms and Civil War medicine and bioethics collections.

Your academic coach is one of 15 clinical faculty coaches, and you meet one-on-one each year. Your clinical skills group and intersession coaching cohort are linked to your coach, and you plan year 4 together.

The Office of Academic Support and Individual Success (OASIS) has educational skills specialists for one-on-one learning plans and study workshops. The Pre-Matriculation Program previews the main teaching formats, with a guided anatomy lab, wellness sessions and a practice exam.

Career advising starts at orientation, with required sessions every year, many in I-FOSTER and intersession weeks, and an advisor meeting during the year 3 selective. Departments choose specialty advisors for residency applications.

The Office of Student Wellness, created in 2009 and led by a clinical psychologist, is a first stop for wellness. Medical students have embedded counselors, in person in Sacramento or by telehealth, and psychiatric care through the Trainee Mental Health Clinic, whose director does not evaluate students. For primary care, the school chose a Rancho Cordova clinic with no clinical rotations.