The University of Georgia School of Medicine MD program

The pre-clerkship courses are integrated organ-system courses, with anatomy, small groups, clinical skills and community health built into each. Year 1 covers how the healthy body works, taught in a clinical context, while you start on clinical reasoning and skills. Year 2 turns to how disease develops and how it is diagnosed and managed. In years 3 and 4, learning on clinical teams takes over, and you are expected to work when your team works.

In year 1 your small group usually works through one case a week, with prompts that push you to explore everything from genes to society. In year 2 you typically take on two, moving faster and reasoning more independently. Large-group sessions support the small groups through lectures, workshops, panel discussions and flipped classrooms (you prepare first, then apply it in class). Most are optional unless marked required, but their content is tested.

Six curricular threads, each with a faculty lead, run through all four years inside courses and clerkships. They are evidence-based medicine; ethics, professionalism and professional identity formation; systems-based practice; technology in medicine; team-based healthcare; and serving Georgia and beyond. Technology in medicine, for example, covers digital tools, health information systems and artificial intelligence.

UGA Today, the university's news site, reported in July 2026 that students will also explore nine Georgia health challenges through the curriculum, research, service and clinical care. They are cardiovascular disease, diabetes and metabolic disease, cancer, maternal and infant mortality, mental and cognitive health, trauma, the health workforce shortage, infectious and zoonotic (animal-borne) disease, and respiratory health.

A typical pre-clerkship week has 20 to 32 hours of scheduled activities, 14 to 18 of them required. School policy caps scheduled work, including assignments done outside class, at 32 hours a week averaged over a course. No single out-of-class assignment should take more than 60 minutes.

In the school's sample year 1 week, small groups meet from 8 to 10am on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with large-group sessions on most other mornings. Clinical skills come on Tuesday afternoon and anatomy lab on Thursday afternoon, in scheduled groups. Simulation takes place a couple of times a semester, on Thursday mornings. One Monday afternoon a month you work at your CPH clinic site, and Friday brings a weekly quiz and a quiz review.

The rest is unscheduled study time, alongside 1 to 6 hours of recordings and readings, which the school calls self-paced activities (SPAs).

Anatomy runs through the organ-system courses of years 1 and 2, using large-group sessions, self-paced activities, clinical correlation sessions, imaging, models and dissection. A director of anatomy oversees the curriculum, the lab and the human donor program.

In the lab you dissect a human body donor with a team. Each session opens with a short faculty introduction to the day's dissection, then faculty circulate to help while you identify key structures. The school notes that the donor is often one of your first teachers in medicine, and the lab teaches respect for the body and privacy for donors and, later, patients.

Fundamentals covers the back, breast and pectoral region, and Musculoskeletal the deep back, gluteal region, shoulder and both limbs. Brain & Behavior covers the head and neck, including the brain, spinal cord, skull and face. All three use Grant's Dissector, a dissection manual.

Lab practical exams, where you answer questions on specimens, count for 4% of the Fundamentals grade, 20% in Musculoskeletal and 12% in Brain & Behavior. Quiz and exam questions also test anatomy.

Clinical skills teaching begins in your first week. Alongside history-taking, year 1 covers responding to patients' emotions, motivational interviewing (helping patients find their own reasons to change) and physical examination matched to each course's anatomy. In Musculoskeletal, the second course, you take vital signs on standardized and real patients.

Within the first few weeks, CPH takes you to the Athens Free Clinic. This primary care teaching clinic gives free care to the Athens community through 12 mobile clinic sites and the Clarke Middle Health Center. Each year you work 7 to 8 half-day clinics at your assigned site under supervision, prepared by CPH classes on topics such as trauma-informed care and health disparities.

Year 2 adds hospital encounters with real patients. You learn advanced examination and communication skills, including sensitive (intimate) examinations, and write up full histories and physicals (H&P write-ups) from your hospital visits. After Step 1 and a week of clinical orientation, year 3 puts you on clinical teams full time.

In years 1 and 2, courses are graded Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory, and grading is criterion-based, not on a curve. To pass, you need a final course score of at least 70% and a final exam score of at least 65%, with no rounding. An internal Honors designation needs 90% on both and an average rating of at least Proficient in the course's clinical skills and CPH activities. It appears in your Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), the summary sent with residency applications, but not on your transcript.

Each syllabus sets the weights: in Fundamentals, the final exam is 55% of the grade, small-group learning 20% and weekly quizzes 15%. Quizzes have about 30 questions and course exams usually 80 or more. Both use mostly NBME-style multiple-choice questions from the school's own bank, and exams are pitched for an average of 80% to 82%.

Clinical skills are also judged across each semester through evaluation rubrics and the OSCE, whose stations may use standardized patients, task trainers or simulation. CPH is judged through a portfolio of your team project, reflections, evaluations and a clinical log. To move up each year, you must pass every course, the OSCE and the portfolio, and meet proficiency standards in clinical skills and CPH.

Clerkships and clinical electives are graded A, B, C or F on your transcript, shown in the MSPE as Honors, Near Honors, Satisfactory and Unsatisfactory. An A needs a clerkship score of at least 90% and a shelf exam at or above the 75th national percentile. A B needs 80% and the 50th percentile, and a passing C needs 70% and the 5th.

USMLE Step 1 has been reported only as pass or fail since January 26, 2022. You take it in the six-week dedicated period after year 2 classes, and must pass it to begin year 3. You may be allowed to start clerkships with a score pending, but a fail takes you out until you pass. Step 2 CK comes at the start of year 4 and must be passed to graduate.

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 notice had named 2028. On the current schedule in the school's four-year overview, a 2027 entrant would sit Step 1 between mid-May and late June 2029 and Step 2 CK around July 2030. Both would fall after the change. The USMLE will publish each year's dates over a year ahead, will not offer Step 2 CK in certain months and encourages schools to review Step timing rules, so these dates could shift.

• In courses of four weeks or more, instructors who teach your small group of 10 or fewer for at least three sessions write a narrative assessment, a written account of your performance. Required clerkships include one on the final grade form.
• A shelf exam scored below the 5th percentile can be retaken after study; passing caps the clerkship grade at C, and a second fail means repeating the clerkship.
• Step 1 must be passed within 12 months of the end of the dedicated period, in at most three attempts. The school provides Boards and Beyond and First Aid for Step 1 to prepare.
• Alpha Omega Alpha is the national medical honor society. Once the school's chapter is recognized, students with Honors in at least 30% of pre-clerkship courses and a clerkship grade point average of at least 3.5 can apply.

In years 1 and 2 you are based in Athens, with clinical work at Athens Free Clinic sites and hospital visits in year 2. From year 3, clerkships and fourth-year electives follow a distributed model. Rather than training at one main hospital, you will rotate through partner hospitals and health systems in several parts of Georgia.

The school names five regions as central to its mission: North Georgia, Metro Atlanta, Piedmont, Southwest and Southeast. Most rotations are planned in three of them, at partners in Northeast Georgia, Atlanta, and in and around Athens. These include Northeast Georgia Health System in Gainesville, Piedmont Healthcare in Athens and Atlanta, St. Mary's Health Care System in Athens, and Northside Hospital and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.

Each student will also do a year 3 rural rotation with a partner in the Southwest, where Crisp Regional Medical Center in Cordele is named, or the Southeast. The clerkship page, last updated in August 2026, says the school has partners in all five regions, though its map still shows the Southeast rural site as to be determined. It adds that more partners are under development.

The clinical affiliates page, updated in June 2026, lists 12 affiliates. Besides the six partners above, it names Elbert Memorial Hospital, Landmark Hospital of Athens, Ridgeview Institute of Monroe, Shepherd Center, Stephens County Hospital and Union General Health System.

Year 3 will include time for career exploration electives, rotations you choose to explore a specialty or gain experience in the one you have picked. The four-year overview ends the year with a block labeled Clinical Exploration. If you delay Step 1 by less than six weeks after clinical orientation, you may still graduate with your class, but you give up career exploration elective time.

Year 4 will mix required rotations with electives, and you need at least 12 weeks of electives to graduate. They are graded A, B, C or F. Grading exceptions for a course, such as an away elective at another institution, need approval from the Curriculum Oversight Committee. Your core specialty advisor helps you choose senior electives and away rotations.

Research is part of the required curriculum. Through CPH, every student completes a community health scholarly project with a team and a community partner, developing an intervention for a local health problem over years 1 and 2. Teams may go on to present or publish their work at state, regional or national conferences.

Beyond that, the Office of Research supports projects from year 1 through four phases: explore, develop, discover and disseminate. The Medical Student Scholars Program (MSSP; the Medical Scholars Program in the handbook) offers students in good academic standing 8 to 10 weeks of research in the summer between years 1 and 2. You can work in Athens or elsewhere in the United States or abroad, then present at a research symposium.

The Georgia Clinical and Translational Science Alliance (GA-CTSA) links Emory University, Morehouse School of Medicine, the Georgia Institute of Technology and UGA. Through it you can earn a Master of Science in Clinical Research (MSCR), a one-to-two-year program, and graduate with a combined MD/MSCR. The school's FAQ also describes an optional research year between years 3 and 4.

On other dual degrees, the FAQ says the school is exploring the possibility and considering an MD/MPH and an MD/MBA. You would apply at the end of year 2 or start of year 3, take a leave of absence after year 3 for the second degree, then return for year 4.

A July 2026 UGA Today article describes a planned four-year capstone project. Each student will be assigned to one of five Georgia regions, which the article names as Appalachia, Metro Atlanta, Piedmont, Wiregrass and Coastal. Each regional group will explore its region and work with the community to find a real gap or need in health care. The group will develop a solution that draws on several fields, to be showcased at the end of year 4.

The school is on UGA's Health Sciences Campus on Prince Avenue in Athens, shared with the UGA College of Public Health. The site was the State Normal School, an early teachers' college, from 1891 to 1932 and a U.S. Navy Supply Corps School from 1953 to 2005.

Russell Hall, built in 1974, holds classrooms, small-group and clinical skills rooms, a gross anatomy lab, a medical library and faculty offices. George Hall, the campus's only auditorium, hosts large lectures, and Carnegie Library is now a student center and digital library.

The new Medical Education and Research Building, 93,000 square feet, is planned as the school's main teaching building. Plans include active-learning classrooms, an anatomy lab, a simulation center, a clinical skills center, study and well-being spaces and a student lounge, with nearly a third of the space for biomedical research. It is scheduled for completion in December 2026, according to the school's campus page and UGA Today reports from July and August 2026. The school says the building will let it grow to 120 students per class.

The Medical School Library, part of UGA Libraries, is open 24 hours a day with a UGA ID, with databases such as PubMed, ClinicalKey and UpToDate.

Each student belongs to one of five Houses, named for regions of Georgia that the school's map labels Appalachia, Metro, Piedmont, Coastal and Wiregrass. In your first semester you meet one-on-one with the associate dean for student affairs, the academic success and financial aid teams, and your Head of House. The Dean of Students then holds individual sessions with you across the preclinical and clinical phases.

Before clerkships you are paired with a core specialty advisor, who later guides your residency application, from personal statements to interviews. The UGA Mentor Program pairs you with practicing physicians from UGA's alumni and community network, and the school gives its student-to-faculty ratio as three to one.

The Academic Success Program offers learning specialists and Step 1 preparation support, alongside near-peer tutoring. If you hit difficulty, a progress team can place you on extra support, an internal status that does not affect your academic standing. UGA's Counseling and Psychiatric Services (CAPS) can be reached around the clock, as can a Student Affairs team member on an emergency cell phone.

Students run a Student Leadership Council of five elected officers and can propose new clubs. The school is applying for chapters of the Alpha Omega Alpha and Gold Humanism honor societies, expecting recognition before its first class enters the clinical phase.