The UC San Diego School of Medicine MD program

The pre-clerkship years are built from Foundational Sciences blocks of two to five weeks, each on one organ system. In Year 1 most blocks cover how a healthy system works and the drugs that act on it. In Year 2 you return to the same systems for disease and early treatment, so the Year 1 Cardiovascular System block is followed by Cardiovascular System II.

Longitudinal courses run beside the blocks, so each week mixes science with skills. Humanistic Anatomy fills Year 1 and gives way in Year 2 to Clinical Decision Making, a weekly course built on clinical cases. Diagnostics, Practice of Medicine, Equity in Systems Science (ESS) and CARE run through both years, with concentration electives alongside. The school has also approved a nutrition and culinary medicine thread across the four-year curriculum, and in October 2026 it was recruiting a director to introduce it in stages.

The current course page says ESS meets twice a week and CARE five or six times a quarter throughout Years 1 and 2. The schematics show both running through Year 1 and the fall and winter of Year 2, before Step 1 study. The school's 2023 and 2025 slides described ESS as a 15-month course of four hours a week and CARE as five quarters of three to four hours a week.

From Year 3 you learn mainly on inpatient and outpatient care teams. Year 4 adds two four-week courses back on campus.

This timetable comes from school slides of October 2023 and January 2025, since removed from the school's site (archived copies survive), so treat it as a guide. In the Year 1 week they show, the day ran from 8 a.m. to about 5 p.m. with a lunch hour at noon, and most teaching sat in the mornings.

Organ-block sessions ran on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings, and many were self-paced: Monday's was in person only on the first day of a block, and Thursday's was always self-paced. ESS took the late morning on Tuesdays and Fridays, and anatomy lab took Wednesday morning.

Afternoons had no scheduled teaching except CARE on Tuesday and, on Wednesday, Practice of Medicine and Diagnostics in alternate weeks. The slides called Diagnostics an every-other-week course; the current course page says it meets weekly. Year 2 followed a similar pattern, with Clinical Decision Making on Wednesday mornings and CARE on Thursday afternoons.

Anatomy is taught through Humanistic Anatomy, known as Compassionatomy, which every first-year student takes. It meets weekly through Year 1 and treats the body donor as your first patient. A 2024 university story describes groups of four or five students sharing one donor for the whole course.

This is hands-on, donor-based dissection. The current course page says you study anatomy through surgical exposures, the approaches surgeons use to reach a structure, with constant care to keep the donor's body intact. The anatomy lab page names anxiety about performing dissection as one reason the lab can be hard.

Compassionatomy was developed with the Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion and the Compassion Institute. Each session opens with about ten minutes of guided meditation, storytelling or discussion. Each group receives a sheet with its donor's age, occupation and cause of death, and the face stays covered until much later in the course.

Each student writes a private letter of thanks to the donor at the start of the year; at the end, the class burns the sealed letters on a La Jolla beach. First-year students also organize a memorial service for donor families. Donors come through the school's Body Donation Program, which began when the school opened in 1968 and receives about 550 donors a year.

Histology and radiology run alongside in the Diagnostics course, with pathology added in Year 2. Every student's iPad comes with the Complete Anatomy 3D app.

You meet real patients in Year 1, mostly as an observer at first. Through CARE, clinical preceptors (practicing clinicians who supervise students) host first- and second-year students for eight hours of observational shadowing each quarter. For 2026-27 the school was recruiting more than 300 preceptors. The school's Standardized Patient Program supplies trained actors and non-actors for clinical skills practice and assessment.

The Student-Run Free Clinic's introductory course, Community Advocacy (Free Clinic I), is for first-year students only, runs in fall and winter and fills by lottery. At clinic, each patient is paired with a medical student and an interpreter. First-year students work with fourth-year students, then present to resident and attending physicians to agree on a treatment plan.

Free Clinic II lets first- and second-year students take on leadership or continuity-of-care roles. Other electives add patient contact. You can spend a half-day a week in a Reproductive Medicine preceptor's office, follow one patient through pregnancy and delivery, or take an eight-week emergency medicine elective that mixes clinical shifts with teaching. Health Frontiers in Tijuana (MED 239) puts you on mixed teams with UABC students, caring for people facing poverty, homelessness and barriers to care.

Grades follow the Academic Senate's grading rule for the School of Medicine, Regulation 503, last amended in April 2021. Pre-clerkship core courses, Year 3 selectives, Principles to Practice and the Residency Transition Course are pass/fail. Core clerkships are graded Honors, Near Honors, Pass or Fail, and so are fourth-year electives unless a course has approved pass/fail or satisfactory/unsatisfactory grading. Pre-clerkship electives are graded satisfactory or unsatisfactory, and no grade points are given.

A committee called CLEAR, short for Comprehensive Longitudinal Equitable Assessment and Reporting, reviews students' academic records and professional behavior every quarter. It sets standards for commendation, identifies students at risk and designs remediation. The school's 2023 and 2025 slides said it draws on every assessment, from multiple-choice questions to peer evaluations and reflective writing. The slides also tied it to your Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), the school's summary letter for residency applications.

Practice of Medicine includes OSCEs. To graduate you must also pass the UC San Diego Clinical Practice Examination (CPX) when the curriculum schedules it.

The United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) is the national exam series that MD students take toward medical licensure, and students at LCME-accredited schools are eligible to take it. Step 1 checks that you understand and can use the core sciences behind medicine, and since January 26, 2022 it has been reported only as pass or fail. Step 2 CK (Clinical Knowledge) tests whether you can apply clinical knowledge to supervised patient care.

You must take Step 1 before orientation for the core clerkships and pass it to enter Year 3. Step 2 CK must be passed within three months of finishing Year 3; the four-year chart marks it as flexible timing between Years 3 and 4. The 2027-28 calendar is not yet posted. On the current schedule, a student entering in August 2027 would sit Step 1 in about April or May 2029 and Step 2 CK by about August 2030.

In August 2026 the USMLE program announced a move to designated testing dates from January 2029, with Step exams offered less often each year. The date had already moved once, from 2028. USMLE says it will publish dates more than a year ahead and will not offer Step 2 CK in some months. It has also urged schools to review rules on when students must test, so the school's timing rules may change before your exams.

All the hospitals the school names are in the San Diego area; there is no separate regional campus. The school sits on UC San Diego's La Jolla campus, with the VA hospital next door and Jacobs Medical Center also in La Jolla. The school calls UC San Diego Medical Center in Hillcrest, central San Diego, the first of its two primary hospitals, and places Rady Children's Health between Hillcrest and La Jolla.

Core clerkships put you on inpatient and outpatient teams at UC San Diego Health sites and, according to the Core Curriculum page, at Rady Children's Hospital, Scripps Health and the VA. On department pages, OB/GYN students rotate through Jacobs and Hillcrest, and pediatrics uses general pediatrics clinics in Kearny Mesa and La Jolla. Fourth-year emergency medicine students work in the Hillcrest and La Jolla emergency departments.

The university catalog adds private practices, community clinics and home visit programs, in neighborhoods of San Diego and in Tijuana, Mexico. The school's January 2025 slides counted more than 100 ambulatory sites, including the free clinic, the San Diego Department of Health, Donovan State Prison and Lincoln High School. The introductory free clinic course strongly recommends your own transportation.

The school's pages do not all list the same hospitals. The Clinical Training Sites page leaves out Scripps, but the MD/PhD program's page names Scripps Green and Scripps Mercy. The 2025-26 course list also included a medicine sub-internship at Scripps; sub-internships are explained under electives, below. Bed counts differ too: the school's undated page gives Hillcrest 390 beds, while UC San Diego Health's current figure is 381.

Pre-clerkship electives carry one or two units each, and most count toward one or more concentrations. The February 2025 list runs to about 70 courses, from Medical Spanish, Medical Chinese and Medical Improv to Wilderness Medicine, Aerospace Medicine and drawing the human body. It also offers preceptorships in neurology, surgery, musculoskeletal medicine and pediatric gastroenterology.

The 2025-26 selectives ranged from anesthesiology, dermatology and radiology to underserved medicine, sports medicine, child psychiatry and neurosurgery. In the emergency medicine selective, for example, you take histories, examine patients and learn basic resuscitation. The Elective Curriculum page and the free clinic's education page still mention 2-week third-year electives or selectives, but the current schematics and graduation rules set three weeks.

Year 4 gives you six 4-week clinical electives from more than 90 courses, many at sub-internship level. A sub-internship, or sub-I, puts you in the role of a first-year resident, with primary responsibility for patients under close supervision. The 2025-26 list included sub-internships from medicine, surgery and pediatrics to OB/GYN, emergency medicine, psychiatry and orthopedics.

You also need at least three months of direct patient care clerkships at UC San Diego or an affiliated hospital, including a month each of ambulatory, inpatient (intensive care counts) and primary care. At least three more months go to other elective clerkships.

Away rotations are rotations at another hospital or medical school, usually in Year 4; the 2025-26 course list included an Away Rotation and Custom Rotation course in many departments. Program in Medical Education (PRIME) students may do their fourth-year equity or Native health rotations outside San Diego, and the global health and compassion concentrations include rotations abroad.

Every student follows the Elective Concentration in one of five areas. They are Building Systems (leadership, data and advocacy), Compassion in Care (vulnerable populations), Equity and Advocacy (health disparities), Exploration and Innovation (clinical research and entrepreneurship), and Teaching and Learning (medical education). It is a graduation requirement; students granted an exemption take two extra Year 4 electives instead.

The concentration leads to the Capstone Project, a self-driven academic project typically done in Year 4, using two 4-week capstone blocks and up to three faculty mentors. Older and departmental pages still say Independent Study Project (ISP). The 2021 grading rule grades the ISP satisfactory or unsatisfactory, and an October 2025 committee list places it under the Electives Committee.

Two academic concentrations go further, and you are considered for them when you apply; the Global Health Academic Concentration takes five students a year. It adds a global health research course in Year 1 and six to eight weeks of research abroad that summer. Later come a 3-week U.S.-Mexico Border Health selective in Year 3 and a 4- to 6-week clinical elective abroad in Year 4. Sites change yearly; recent ones include Gaborone, Hanoi, Mumbai, Quito and Chiang Mai.

The Compassion in Medicine Academic Concentration took its first students in fall 2025 and replaces the standard Elective Concentration. It adds three required Year 1 courses, including Free Clinic I, and three more electives. A 6- to 10-week summer project on compassion, presented to the school, follows Year 1, and Year 4 includes an international clinical rotation focused on compassion.

PRIME, part of a University of California effort to train physicians for underserved communities, runs two five-year MD/master's programs. Both add required courses in Years 1 and 2, a summer scholarly project after Year 1 and a master's degree. Both also point you to a fourth-year rotation of at least four weeks in their field.

The Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) is the MD/PhD route, with research training at UC San Diego and partner institutes that its page lists, including Scripps Research and the Salk Institute. MSTP students do lab rotations in their first two summers, PhD work after Year 2, and rejoin Year 3 in spring after their thesis defense.

• PRIME-HEq (Health Equity): 12 students a year, focused on under-resourced communities in California; the master's year usually follows Year 3.
• PRIME-TIDE (Transforming Indigenous Doctor Education): care for Native populations, with a Year 3 focus on diabetes and substance use; master's options include public health, clinical research and public policy.
• MSTP: about 90 students, 10 to 13 joining each year; about eight years in total on the MSTP pages, or eight to nine in the university catalog.
• Master of Public Health (MPH): the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science's two-year MPH has a one-year option for medical students.
• MedGap: a funded research year for third-year students, with biostatistics coursework.
• Summer research after Year 1: a School of Medicine stipend program, Sanford Scholars projects on empathy and compassion, surgical research and the Medical Student Training in Aging Research (MSTAR) program.

The Simulation Training Center, in the Medical Education and Telemedicine Building in La Jolla, has four rooms. They are set up as a hospital ward, an emergency or intensive care room, an operating room and a procedural training room. Sessions can be watched through one-way glass or recorded for debriefing, and manikins range from adult SimMan 3G simulators to premature-baby and birthing simulators.

The Professional Development Center houses the Standardized Patient Program in 18 exam rooms, each with an exam bed and two cameras with microphones. Standardized patients reproduce the same history, findings and emotions multiple times a day, fill in a checklist on your performance and give you feedback; they do not take part in intimate examinations.

The Medical Teaching Labs host histology, radiology and pathology labs, the bootcamp-style suture lab for the surgery clerkship, and blood-drawing and urinalysis labs in the PATH 216 elective. Every entering student receives an iPad Air and Apple Pencil, keeps them after graduating, and uses them on rotations to check electronic health records.

Every entering student joins one of six Academic Communities, the school's learning communities. Each spans all four years, is named for a color and is led by a faculty director who provides mentoring, service learning and career advice. Big Sibs and Senior Mentors (fourth-year students) add peer advice, and midway through Year 3 you choose a Senior Faculty Advisor for fourth-year and residency planning.

Besides coaching you, your Year 3 Mentor Clinician leads small-group clinical reasoning rounds. The Mentor Clinician Program's page says it is embedded in all six clerkships listed there (pediatrics, medicine, neurology, OB/GYN, psychiatry and surgery), while the school lists seven, adding family medicine. Older documents call it the Master Clinician Program.

The Office of Educational Support Services offers free help in most first-year core courses and with planning Step 1 study. Before Year 1 it runs an optional seven-week course, Core Topics in Biomedical Sciences, with team-based learning (questions answered alone, then as a team), weekly quizzes and an academic coach. The 2026 course ran June 17 to July 31.

Wellness support includes weekly office hours with the Director of Wellness Initiatives, the student-led MAPS peer support program, peer resilience mentoring and a coaching program. Sessions also cover burnout and staying well while preparing for the USMLE. Counseling comes from the university's Counseling and Psychological Services, which also holds weekly on-site Let's Talk sessions.