The UC Riverside School of Medicine MD program

Years 1 and 2 combine the basic, clinical, behavioral and health systems sciences. The school describes instruction as driven by cases explored in small groups, labs, conferences, clinical skills workshops and independent study. Policy requires at least half of each pre-clerkship block's teaching time to be active learning rather than lectures.

Under EVOLVE each of the ten blocks has five modules: Foundational Sciences, LACE, Integrated Doctoring, Health Systems Sciences and Professional Identity Formation. Disease states come into Year 1 earlier. Health Systems Sciences covers topics such as biostatistics, epidemiology, evidence-based medicine, value-based care, public health, health disparities, medical economics, quality and safety, and law.

Integrated Doctoring combines doctoring and clinical skills, case-based learning (CBL) and clinical reasoning. It expands CBL through a planned learning communities model, which in medical schools usually means smaller groups of students who learn together over time.

The current curriculum's modules are Foundational Sciences, Case-based Learning, Doctoring, Clinical Skills and LACE, plus Biostatistics in Block 1. Current school pages call the small-group case sessions CBL; the 2026-27 catalog's second-year course descriptions and an older faculty page call them problem-based learning (PBL).

Required threads, themes taught across two to four years, cover clinical reasoning, health systems science, palliative care, pediatrics, public health and social medicine, and health equity, social justice and anti-racism. An interprofessional education thread has you learn with other health professions students, and EVOLVE adds substance abuse management and LGBTQIA+ health. Community physicians teach as clinical faculty: more than 1,000 volunteer clinicians, says one school page, or more than 1,300, says the faculty list updated in September 2026.

In a pre-clerkship week, school policy caps required in-class instruction at 26 hours, with no more than 11 hours of lectures on average. Required teaching and exams are scheduled only between 8am and 5pm.

Each week also protects 4 hours for assigned independent learning, such as preparing for cases, and 10 hours of weekday self-study time. Optional electives and Designated Emphasis sessions (multi-year programs in areas such as medical Spanish and ultrasound) fit into self-study time, evenings or weekends. Every other week, one afternoon goes to your LACE practice; the 2023 LACE handbook set these on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday afternoons, from 1:30 to 5pm.

On the current calendar, blocks last five to nine weeks, each followed by an integrated examination period of up to a week. Low-stakes quizzes come every one to three weeks in between.

Anatomy is taught by dissection. In the gross anatomy lab, first-year students work at assigned dissection tables on bodies from the Donated Body Program at UC Irvine. The school's 2026-27 lab instructions ask you to treat each donor with the respect given to a living patient, and they protect donors' anonymity: no visitors or photography are allowed.

The lab, in the original School of Medicine Education Building, is open around the clock except during exam periods, but you never enter alone after hours. You complete safety training first and wear full protective equipment, including a face shield and gown, in the lab. Models, skeletons and radiographs support the dissections.

Each block covers the anatomy of its body systems; on the current first-year page, gross anatomy lectures and labs in Block 5 focus on the head and neck. Under the current grading policy, Year 1 block exams combine lecture, anatomy, histology and radiology or ultrasound content, and may include a lab practical. EVOLVE keeps anatomy and ultrasound integrated in Years 1 and 2.

Ultrasound is part of the gross anatomy program, taught by second-year instructors from the Ultrasound Student Instructor Cadre under a faculty advisor. Sessions follow the organ systems in lectures, moving from machine controls to the heart and lungs, kidneys and bladder, gut, muscles and joints, and the eye and thyroid. Instructors are chosen after summer training and the Ultrasound Games, held on the first weekend of Block 6.

Patient contact starts in Year 1 through LACE, which the school calls its three-year longitudinal clerkship. A Year 1 survey asks where you live, how you travel, which languages you speak and what interests you. The LACE team uses your answers to match you with a community primary care preceptor.

In Years 1 and 2 you spend one half-day every other week in your preceptor's practice, and in Year 3 one half-day every week alongside your clerkships. The 2023 LACE handbook set 16 sessions in Year 1, 15 in Year 2 and 39 in Year 3. In that handbook the first session falls in week 5 of Block 1, with tasks such as taking vital signs, a history and a skin exam.

The same handbook lists skills to practice in each block. They build from vital signs and examinations in Year 1 to differential diagnoses and management plans, for conditions such as diabetes and heart failure, in Year 3. You log your patient encounters, and each LACE year includes at least one observed encounter and a mid-year feedback meeting, both led by your preceptor in that handbook.

Outside the curriculum, students run two free clinics. The Riverside Free Clinic serves underserved people across the Inland Empire, and the Coachella Valley Free Clinic serves the Eastern Coachella Valley, where patients are mainly migrant, uninsured farm workers.

Under the school's current grading policy (July 2026), written for the curriculum EVOLVE replaces, each Year 1 and 2 block course is graded Pass or Fail. Passing needs at least 70% in every module and on the Foundational Sciences final exam, with no rounding up. That exam is worth 75% of the module grade and low-stakes quizzes up to 20%.

Under the same policy, Year 1 final exams are written by UCR faculty; Year 2 uses NBME exams customized to what was taught. Each block also ends with an individual clinical skills assessment, with formative OSCEs for practice. Where it can, the school releases target scores rather than class averages or rankings.

Under the current policy, third-year clerkships are graded Honors, High Pass, Pass or Fail, weighted 35% knowledge, 45% clinical performance and 20% professionalism. Most test knowledge with an NBME shelf exam, a national subject exam; passing needs the 6th percentile nationally, and failing a first attempt limits that clerkship to a Pass. Emergency medicine and neurology set their own final exams.

In the current Year 3, formative OSCEs in the fall and spring, each with four patient encounters, do not affect grades; a color code tells you if you are on track. At the end of Year 3, the CPX, designed by clinicians and educators from 10 California medical schools, has you see eight patients with a broad range of outpatient problems. If you do not pass, a workshop and a retest follow.

Under the current policy, in Year 4 the sub-internship, critical care, radiology and electives are graded Honors to Fail, and Transition to Residency is pass/fail. Your Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), the dean's letter residency programs read, places you in one of five categories, from Distinguished to Good, with no set share of the class in each.

In the USMLE licensing exams, Step 1, on the sciences behind medicine, has been pass/fail since January 26, 2022, and Step 2 CK covers clinical medicine. For MD students, attending an LCME-accredited school is what makes you eligible to sit them, while DO students and international graduates qualify through other routes.

• Step 1 must be sat before Year 3 and passed for you to continue in clerkships (policy 950-07-015, April 2026). If you are not consistently passing NBME practice exams, you can be approved for four more weeks of study, delaying Year 3 by four weeks.
• Later deadlines exist. To start Year 3 in January, you must sit Step 1 by October 1 and pass by November 1. Otherwise you rejoin in June the following year, sitting by February 1 and passing by April 1.
• Step 2 CK is taken at the end of Year 3 or the start of Year 4.
• On the current schedule, an August 2027 entrant, the Class of 2031 by the calendar's labeling, would sit Step 1 in dedicated study ending in early June 2029. Step 2 CK would follow around June to late summer 2030.
• That projection follows the 2025-26 and 2026-27 calendars, the latest the school has published.
• In August 2026 the USMLE program announced a move to designated testing dates from January 2029, with Step exams offered less often each year. A June 2026 notice had named 2028. Both of your Step exams would fall after the change.
• USMLE says it will publish testing dates more than a year ahead and has urged schools to revisit policies that restrict when students test, so UC Riverside's Step deadlines may change.

For Years 1 and 2 you are based on the UC Riverside campus, apart from your LACE practice, which can be anywhere in Inland Southern California. From Year 3 you train across the school's network of community hospitals and regional medical centers.

That network includes the public safety-net hospitals of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, private acute care centers, community hospitals and a nonprofit integrated health plan. There are also two behavioral health centers, a Veterans Administration facility, a state-operated forensic psychiatric hospital and clinics of UCR Health, the school's clinical practice.

An optional third-year clerkship lottery places you in one of eight tracks, each with a fixed rotation order, and lets you request clinical sites. If you skip it, the Office of Medical Education builds your schedule, and final assignments depend on curriculum requirements and site availability.

You are expected to travel to any assigned site, so you need reliable transportation. Students on required third-year clerkships in Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley, in towns such as Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, La Quinta and Indio, are given housing. In the 2023 LACE handbook, students based in the desert for 16 or more weeks switched to a LACE preceptor there.

In Years 1 and 2, electives are optional small-group courses for students in good academic standing, on topics such as medical Spanish, humanities, ultrasound and nutrition. They start no earlier than November 1 of Year 1. Most carry 10 to 18 hours, you can take two at once, and you need 80% attendance.

Year 3 has three 2-week clinical electives in nearly every field, assigned by lottery and subject to capacity; you can even propose a new elective subject. In Years 3 and 4, students in good standing can also take Scholarly Activities Electives, protected time for about 30 hours a week of research and writing.

Year 4 holds 24 weeks of electives, or up to 28 if you give up flex time. At least 12 weeks must be clinical, meaning 20 or more hours of direct patient contact a week, including at least 4 weeks in a second specialty. Up to 12 weeks can be non-clinical, such as research, online modules, reading, teaching or wilderness medicine.

Electives can be at UCR core sites or away. Away rotations at other US medical schools and academic medical centers are booked through Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO), a service of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). You request your Year 4 schedule in April from a catalog of approved home and away sites.

Designated Emphasis programs are optional, pass/fail programs lasting up to four years, built partly from electives and selectives. You can join from November 1 of Year 1 if you are in good academic standing, hold at most two at once, and must attend at least 80% of sessions. Completed emphases appear on your transcript. There are five:

• Community Health, with the Inland Empire Area Health Education Center (AHEC) Scholars Program: 189 hours, including 120 hours of clinical training at a federally qualified health center. You also complete a community project by February of Year 4 and earn a California AHEC certificate.
• Healthcare Leadership: 15 students a year complete 300 contact hours over four years through workshops, community engagement and projects they lead, such as improving patient flow at the Riverside Free Clinic. It earns a distinction on your MSPE.
• Medical and Health Humanities: at least 180 hours of courses, research, a capstone and a public presentation, joinable any time in your first three years. Courses range from history of medicine to graphic medicine.
• Medical Spanish (HABLAMoS): open to all language levels until the end of Block 1 of Year 2, with conversation workshops and free-clinic encounters from Year 1.
• Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS): you teach in the instructor cadre in Year 2 and log clerkship scans in a CITrUS passport in Year 3. Year 4 adds a four-week ultrasound elective, a two-week capstone and a POCUS OSCE, finished by May for the certificate.

Research is built in for everyone through the Health Systems Science Project, the school's main inquiry course, run within LACE in Years 1 to 3. Working in teams, you move from literature review and a research question to review by the Institutional Review Board (IRB), the panel that approves research on people, then to data collection and analysis.

You present your work at the annual Dean's Research Day; the fourth was scheduled for April 3, 2026. Everyone takes human subjects research training in Year 1 and renews it in Year 3.

Optional research comes on top. After Year 1 you can apply for a summer project with a faculty mentor, with a stipend and one unit of credit. The Student Affairs research page describes a six-week fellowship, while the 2026 Summer Research Program ran eight weeks, June 8 to July 31. In Year 4 you can earn credit for up to two four-week research electives with a faculty mentor and a written report.

The MD/PhD adds a PhD in Biomedical Sciences: you normally complete the first two years of medical school, spend about three years on the PhD, then return to finish the MD. The MD/MPP (Master of Public Policy) with UC Riverside's School of Public Policy is open once you have entered Year 3. You apply that fall or winter, spend a full academic year there, then finish the MD with a health policy capstone.

Current UCR medical students can also add an MS in Biomedical Sciences, a research master's with a thesis or comprehensive exam. The school pitches it at students who want a year away from the MD for research. PRIME students may take a master's, such as in public health, public policy or business, before their final year.

Teaching happens in two education buildings on the east side of campus, next to the Orbach Science Library. Education Building II, which opened in September 2023, has four large classrooms, 15 case-based learning rooms and study space. Two of its large classrooms combine into one room for more than 300, and it also has a 136-seat tiered lecture hall.

The original Education Building, opened in 2012 and refurbished in 2023, houses the anatomy lab, a 100-seat lecture hall, small-group rooms and 10 patient examination rooms.

The Clinical Skills and Simulation Suite, part of the Center for Simulated Patient Care, opened in 2021 in the basement of the Orbach Science Library. Its 11,000 square feet hold mock exam rooms, emergency room and intensive care simulation spaces and small lecture rooms, used for both training and testing.

Academic advising is kept separate from grading: it comes only from faculty and peers with no role in assessing or promoting you. The Director of Academic Success runs supplemental instruction, peer tutors and Step Coaches, students chosen for how they prepared for Step 1 and passed it. Academic counseling also offers individual study plans and workshops, including on preparing for the USMLE.

The Office of Student Support and Wellness offers wellness planning, mental health trainings, workshops and weekly group meditation, with a mental health professional who mainly supports first-year students. The school also contracts an off-campus psychiatrist with no clinical affiliation to the school, keeping counseling separate from your education.

Four full wellness days a year in Years 1 to 3, and three half-days in Year 4, are fixed in the calendar for appointments and rest. On clerkships you follow the duty-hour limits set for residents: no more than 80 hours a week averaged over four weeks, with 10 hours off between shifts.

Every first-year student gets a second-year mentor through the Big Sib/Little Sib program. Under EVOLVE, the Professional Identity Formation module adds leadership, wellness, career advising and extra support for students who are the first in their family to attend medical school.