The University of Illinois College of Medicine MD program

Phase 1 has seven block courses of 5 to 10 weeks. Blocks 1 and 2 cover how the body works and how disease develops. From Block 3, each block takes a set of related organ systems, so the anatomy, physiology, disease and drug treatment of the heart and lungs, for example, are learned together.

The college says most in-person time is active learning. Scheduled sessions include lectures and flipped classrooms, core cases, team-based learning, labs, small-group discussions, encounters with standardized patients (people trained to play patients) and clinical experiences. Chicago's Phase 1 page says pre-work is often assigned from ScholarRx, an online platform of short interactive modules and practice questions that the college has provided since 2024-25.

Three themes run through Phase 1: Professional Development; Health, Illness and Society; and Health Care Systems. Week-long Synthesis periods between blocks pause new material, using cases that cross organ systems and mentored small groups on professional identity, wellness and careers.

College policy caps Phase 1 at 28 hours of scheduled activities in a seven-day week and expects total coursework, including preparation and quizzes, to stay under 60 hours. Each week must include at least two half-days of protected study time. Sessions are marked attendance-mandatory or attendance-recommended.

Each week of a block brings a closed-book quiz of about 20 questions, including material from earlier blocks. Credit comes from completing the quiz and then reviewing it, not from your score. Each block also has one or two checkpoint tests of about 30 questions.

College rules cap required clinical hours at 80 a week averaged over a month, limit shifts to 16 hours and give you a full day to study before each clerkship exam. On Chicago's internal medicine clerkship, weekdays start around 7 a.m. and end around 5 p.m. when you are not on call, with one day off a week on average.

Anatomy is taught through dissection of donated bodies in the gross anatomy lab. Lab work starts in Block 3, Skin, Muscle and Movement, in January of Year 1 and runs through Block 7 in December of Year 2. The block order partly follows the logic of dissection, starting with skin and muscles and finishing with the pelvic floor and reproductive organs.

Blocks 3 to 6 each include an anatomy lab practical. Because donor tissue is perishable, an excused absence gets a make-up within 10 days, and there is no other chance to sit it after that. Imaging runs alongside, with block objectives asking you to read X-rays, CT and MRI scans and match them to anatomy and examination findings.

Anatomy ends with a Service of Gratitude for the donors and their families during Year 2. On the Rockford campus, a 2017 remodel of the East Building added a Gross Anatomy Laboratory, a Virtual Anatomy Laboratory and a team-based learning classroom. In Peoria, fourth-year students on the Advanced Anatomy elective dissect again and help teach in the cadaver lab.

Patient contact begins in Block 1, when you meet your first patients as a medical student and practice communication, history taking and vital signs. Through Phase 1, Doctoring and Clinical Skills builds up to complete histories and examinations on hospital patients.

Peoria's ELI²TE assigns you at the start of Year 1 to an internal medicine, medicine-pediatrics, pediatrics or family medicine practice within 50 miles of Peoria. You work with the whole team, from receptionist and phlebotomist to physician, rooming patients and taking focused histories and examinations. The college says Chicago students go on rounds and take patient histories from their first year.

In Rockford, students who shadow UI COM faculty and log the visit may interview and examine patients under supervision. Block 9 adds a hospital immersion with feedback from residents or senior students, just before clerkships start in late April.

Every Phase 1 course is graded Pass, Pass after Initial Fail or Fail. A block grade combines attendance (10%), weekly quizzes and team-based learning scores (30%), checkpoint tests (10%), anatomy practicals in Blocks 3 to 6 (5%) and a final exam. The final, about 100 questions in the format of national board exams, carries 45 to 50% and must be passed on its own.

Core clerkships are graded Honors, High Pass, Pass or Fail, as are other clinical courses of four weeks or more; shorter courses are Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory. On the 2026-27 scales, a clerkship grade adds clinical points (6 for Pass, 8 for High Pass, 10 for Honors) to points for your NBME exam (up to 6, or 5 in internal medicine). Honors needs 14, so it takes strong exams as well as strong ward work.

The USMLE is the exam series state medical boards use in licensing. Step 1, on the sciences behind medicine, has been pass/fail since January 26, 2022; Step 2 CK is still scored. At UI COM you sit Step 1 by a college deadline in late March of Year 2 and must pass it to be promoted to Year 3. You must also pass Step 2 CK to graduate, sitting it once at least six core clerkships are done.

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. The USMLE says each year's testing dates will be published more than a year in advance.

On the current schedule, a student entering in August 2027 would begin dedicated Step 1 study around the start of February 2029 and sit by late March 2029. Step 1 would therefore come soon after the switch, so you would sit it on one of the designated testing dates. Step 2 CK would also be taken on a designated date, once the clerkship year ends in late April 2030. The college reminds students to allow time for a score before residency applications reach programs in late September. These dates are projected from the Class of 2029 calendar, the latest posted.

The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) accredits MD programs in the United States. Its directory, updated October 14, 2026, lists the college's accreditation status as full, first granted in or before 1942, with its next survey shown as 2025-26. The college scheduled its latest full survey visit for April 20 to 22, 2026. For MD students, an LCME-accredited school is what makes you eligible for Step 1 and Step 2 CK; students at osteopathic (DO) schools and graduates of eligible schools abroad qualify through other routes.

• An unmet requirement is a failed first attempt that you can retake. Three in Year 1, or two in Year 2, halt your progress, and the college may then allow one repeat year.
• Doctoring and Clinical Skills is graded pass/fail each term on clinical skills, standardized-patient encounters, OSCEs, attendance and professionalism. Peoria's calendar shows a mock OSCE in the fall of Year 2 and an OSCE in the spring.
• Clerkships can begin while you wait for your Step 1 result, but a fail stops you starting new clinical courses until you pass.
• Fail a shelf exam but pass clinically, and you retake it after directed study; passing the retake passes the clerkship, but not with Honors. A clinical failure means repeating the whole clerkship, with Pass as the top grade.
• Every clerkship of four weeks or more includes a formal midpoint feedback meeting, and each core clerkship includes at least one observed history and one observed physical or mental status exam.
• Your class quartile in the Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), the summary sent with residency applications, is based on a 100-point score. Pass/fail Phase 1 gives 44, reduced only for setbacks, and the seven clerkship grades give up to 56.
• You must pass the Graduation Competency Examination to graduate; it uses standardized patients to test communication, history taking, examination, diagnosis and documentation.
• If you start in 2026 or later, you must finish Phase 1 and pass Step 1 within three years, and complete the MD within six.

Your campus decides where you train, because you stay on it for all four years. Peoria students do their Year 4 sub-internship in Peoria.

Chicago students rotate at UI Health's University of Illinois Hospital and at affiliates across Chicagoland, including Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, Cook County Health's Stroger Hospital and three Advocate hospitals. You arrange your own transport. The campus cannot give site preference to students without a car, and the family medicine sites at Mile Square and LaGrange Memorial Hospital say you need a car. Two students on the same clerkship can swap sites if both ask at least six weeks ahead.

At University of Illinois Hospital, students on the internal medicine clerkship join one of five general medicine teams or the cardiology or oncology service, and obstetrics and gynecology splits into three weeks of each. Surgery there is two weeks of general surgery plus three two-week specialty blocks, such as transplant or pediatric surgery. At Jesse Brown VA, the surgery clerkship is eight weeks of general surgery, with night call every fifth night.

Peoria's clerkships take place mainly at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center and Carle Health. OSF Saint Francis is a Level I trauma center that contains OSF HealthCare Children's Hospital of Illinois, and Carle's Methodist Hospital stands next to campus. In Peoria's family medicine clerkship, as the department describes it, you spend three weeks with a community preceptor. You then spend a week each in the residency clinic, on the inpatient service and on the maternal-neonatal-pediatric service at Carle Health Methodist.

Rockford's own clinical operations include Mile Square Health Center–L.P. Johnson Rockford, MERIT (the Medical Evaluation Response Initiative Team, a pediatric forensics program) and correctional health care services. Affiliates include UW Health SwedishAmerican Hospital and Mercy Health. Rockford's rural program sends students to rural hospitals across Illinois, with options in tribal regions of Northern California and Wyoming. Peoria's Rural Student Physician Program is a longitudinal integrated clerkship: for 24 weeks of Year 3 you cover six specialties at once in one rural town, with local physician mentors.

You need 16 weeks of open electives, which you can take in Year 3 or Year 4, in any mix of clinical, research, non-clinical and individualized courses. Offerings differ by campus, but the three campuses run Years 3 and 4 on parallel calendars, so you can choose electives on any of them.

In Year 4, 12 weeks must be physician-assessed, patient-facing electives, which must be catalog courses at UI COM or another LCME-accredited school. Diagnostic radiology and pathology courses generally do not count, though Chicago accepts interventional radiology. Each campus allocates places its own way: Chicago and Rockford use lotteries, and Peoria uses the E*Value Optimizer scheduling system. Chicago's non-clinical options range from Clinical Medical Spanish and Health Humanities to a course called How We Die.

Away rotations at other medical schools are allowed only in Year 4, once all core clerkships are done, and at most 12 credit hours of outside coursework count toward the MD. International electives need approval from the college's Office of International Education; Peoria says they usually last four to eight weeks, and Chicago's Class of 2027 checklist counts work abroad only as open electives.

Research electives need a UI COM faculty supervisor and approval in advance. A two-week research elective ends with an abstract or project summary, and a four-week one with a manuscript intended for publication. Research credit is capped at 6 credit hours, or 12 for MD/PhD students. Individualized electives of up to four weeks can be arranged outside UI COM with approval.

Rockford also runs the Integrated Family Medicine Residency Program, a competitive fourth-year track that prepares students for a family medicine residency. It combines a longitudinal clinic at Mile Square Health Center–L.P. Johnson Rockford with mentoring by a faculty member and a resident. Participants also take a required obstetrics and family medicine rotation at UW Health SwedishAmerican Hospital, which may include a sub-internship.

Scholarly concentration programs are optional four-year pathways that run alongside the MD without adding time. Three are offered on every campus: the Clinical Executive Medicine Program (CEMED), the Education Medicine Program (EdMED) and Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AI-Med). Chicago adds Innovation Medicine (IMED), Global Medicine (GMED) and the Patient-centered Medicine Scholars Program. Urban Medicine (UMED) runs in Chicago and Peoria, Peoria adds Equity Innovation Medicine (EquIMED) and the Rural Student Physician Program, and Rockford runs the Rural Medical Education Program (RMED).

Several have their own entry routes and demands. IMED takes 12 Chicago students a year and pairs them with biomedical engineering students to design medical devices. UMED expects at least 200 hours with a community partner over four years; in Peoria its students run a mini medical school for local fifth and sixth graders. RMED is applied for alongside the MD itself.

The MD part of the MPH, MBA and MS joint degrees can be done on any campus. The MD/MPH, with UIC's School of Public Health, fits 42 graduate credits, mostly online 8-week courses, into the four years, and you apply in the fall of Year 1. The MD/MBA, MD/MS in Clinical and Translational Science and MD/MS in Biomedical Engineering each add a graduate year after Year 3, making five years, with applications typically in the spring of Year 3.

The Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), the MD/PhD route, is based in Chicago and has its own admissions pathway. Its sample timeline runs eight years: two medical school years with summer lab rotations, Step 1, about four years of PhD research with continuing clinical sessions, then the clinical years. It had 97 students and 12 places funded by the National Institutes of Health for 2026-27.

Research programs sit outside the concentrations. Craig Scholars spend the summer after Year 1 on a full-time project with a faculty mentor from any campus, ending in a poster at the College of Medicine Research Forum. The James Scholar Program supports a three- to four-year project starting in Year 2, and James Scholars make up less than 10% of each class.

Chicago's Simulation and Integrative Learning Institute (SAIL), running since 1987, has 22 clinic rooms for standardized-patient encounters and seven manikin suites. It also posts the procedural skills videos and checklists used in the clinical skills courses. Chicago classes meet in the College of Medicine Learning Center, with auditoriums seating 174 and 226, two large active-learning rooms and 18 small-group classrooms.

Peoria students train at Jump Simulation, a collaboration between the campus and OSF HealthCare, with a virtual hospital, a simulated outpatient clinic, a regional transport center and innovation labs. Rockford's A Building, added in 2009, holds the Crawford Library of the Health Sciences, a Simulation Center and a Clinical Skills Center. The campus also runs a Prometric testing center where students can sit USMLE exams.

Rockford's North Building opened in 1916 as a tuberculosis sanitarium. The University of Illinois bought the site in 1971, and the first medical students arrived in 1972. Since that first class, students have used a 1927 cottage nearby, known as the Green House, for study and events.

Each campus runs its own advising. In Chicago you join one of eight COM-Unities, named for college alumni and former faculty. Each has two physician house advisors and four houses, one per class. Your advisor coaches you, leads small groups for the curriculum and checks in about monthly, without any effect on your grades. Peoria divides students from all four classes into five Medical Student Manors with house advisors, and Rockford's curriculum contacts include professionalism house advisors.

Academic learning specialists on every campus help with study plans for blocks, Step 1, Step 2 CK and shelf exams, and peer educators run review sessions and tutoring. Every student receives First Aid for the USMLE Step 1, a six-month UWorld subscription for Step 1, a one-year UWorld subscription for Step 2 CK, and NBME self-assessment vouchers for both exams.

A four-year career advising program modeled on the Association of American Medical Colleges' Careers in Medicine adds specialty advisors in Year 3 and mock interviews in Year 4. For mental health, Chicago's Resiliency Center uses clinicians who play no part in evaluating students, Peoria has the Center for Wellbeing, and Rockford's Student Health and Wellness offers on-site counseling and psychiatry.