The Wake Forest University School of Medicine MD program

In Winston-Salem, Foundations is taught as integrated instruction: large-group sessions present the core science, then small-group courses apply it to cases, alongside simulation. The handbook's course descriptions mention quizzes and case- and problem-based activities in Cardiovascular and Pulmonary, and weekly large- and small-group sessions that stress self-directed learning in Renal. In Winston-Salem, Endocrinology and Reproduction is taught mainly to the whole class in year 2.

Charlotte teaches Foundations through problem-based learning (PBL). A weekly clinical case is the springboard: in a facilitated small group you work out the science behind the patient's problem and the diagnoses to consider, then study independently. Large-group sessions and team-based learning, where you prepare in advance and then solve problems in teams, support the cases. Charlotte also moves hematology into year 1 for earlier case work and splits endocrinology and reproduction across both years.

Several longitudinal courses, which run for months alongside the science courses, are the same on both campuses. LAUNCH, in your first five months, covers study strategies, professionalism, self-awareness, new terms and ideas, careers and healthy living. In year 1, Interpreting and Applying Clinical Evidence (IACE) teaches epidemiology and evidence-based medicine through alternating lectures and small groups. Medicine and Patients in Society (MAPS) uses small-group discussion for ethics, professionalism, behavior and the medical humanities across both years.

From Immersion on, you learn mainly through patient care on clinical teams. A year-long radiology course pairs online pre-learning modules with interactive case conferences on the diseases you meet in each clerkship. In Individualization, acting internships and critical care each include a self-directed learning project on a knowledge gap you identify yourself.

Two published limits shape the pre-clerkship week. Required class time plus required assignments, such as set reading, videos or online modules, may not exceed 40 hours in any week or average more than 30 hours a week over four weeks. Your own independent study does not count toward these limits.

You must attend small-group sessions and clinical encounters in person, along with any large-group session designated as interactive and required. Other large-group teaching is encouraged but optional. Arriving more than 10 minutes late to a required session counts as an unexcused absence. Missing 10 percent or more of required events in a year leads to a meeting with program leadership.

Anatomy is taught in Human Structure and Function (HSF), a system-based introduction to the body's structure, development and function. It links gross and microscopic anatomy and ties both to radiological imaging, the physical exam and common procedures. HSF carries 10 credits on each campus, but the two campuses schedule and teach it differently.

In Winston-Salem, HSF is a 12-week course early in year 1, taught in the anatomy lab at the Bowman Gray Center for Medical Education. The school says the lab was designed for tissue dissection, with group learning bays and monitors that relay the central teaching station. Bodies given through the Whole Body Donation Program support hands-on anatomy learning for first-year students, and a peer-led study group, Anatomy and Physiology Peer-Led Education (APPLE), supports first-years during the course.

Charlotte spreads HSF across years 1 and 2 so that anatomy and imaging line up with each organ-system course. It teaches the course in a plastinated anatomy lab and a virtual anatomy lab. Plastinated specimens are real body parts from consenting donors, preserved so that you can touch and hold them.

Before the campus opened, the school said anatomy and radiology teaching would also use Sectra 3-D virtual dissection tables, ultrasound devices and augmented reality software. On a Sectra table, a touchscreen workstation, you peel back skin and muscle with a virtual knife and see linked radiology images.

Patient contact starts with Clinical Skills in your first term. In small groups led by clinical faculty, you learn to build rapport, take a history, examine patients and write up findings. You practice on real patients in the medical center and on standardized patients while faculty observe and coach you. Clinical Skills 1 is assessed through performance exams with standardized patients.

Year 1 also includes several one-week clinical practice experiences, each with an assigned outpatient preceptor. In year 2, Applied Clinical Skills moves from basic information-gathering to focused histories, interpreting findings, building a differential diagnosis and making first management decisions.

Before clerkships, the three-week Transition to Patient Care course brings you onto the hospital system as a team member, teaches practical procedures and the electronic medical record, and refreshes earlier skills. Immersion then begins around March of year 2.

Pre-clerkship courses are graded pass/fail, and the narrative comments faculty write in them stay off your transcript and your Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), the school's summary letter for residency applications. Numeric grades still count: class quartiles, calculated from pre-clerkship numeric grades and clerkship performance, decide nominations to Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA), the national medical honor society. Some courses and clerkships grade Honors, High Pass, Pass or Fail, by criteria in each syllabus, and after remediation the most you can earn is Pass.

Foundations exams are computer-based multiple-choice tests, some built with the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME), which runs the USMLE with the Federation of State Medical Boards. Courses of four weeks or more give you formal feedback by their midpoint, often through quizzes. On the 2026-27 calendars you also sit the NBME Comprehensive Basic Science Exam, which schools use to gauge readiness for Step 1, twice in year 1 and once in year 2.

End-of-clerkship assessments include NBME subject exams, often called shelf exams: national multiple-choice tests in each specialty. You get one retake of a failed shelf exam, and scoring below the passing threshold on three, even after retakes, puts you on warning. Clerkships of four weeks or more include a mid-rotation feedback meeting, and the director's final written comments feed into your MSPE.

Step 1 tests the science behind medicine in a one-day exam and has been reported pass/fail since January 26, 2022. You must sit it by the school's deadline (you can ask the learning specialist for a delay), and your pass must post within five weeks of the start of your first clerkship. Otherwise you re-enter at Transition to Patient Care with the next class. For the Class of 2029 the deadline is February 12, 2027, with January 27 recommended.

Step 2 CK tests clinical knowledge and keeps a three-digit score. The Class of 2027 had to take it by August 29, 2026, and you must pass it before submitting your rank order list, your ranked choice of residency programs, for the Match.

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 set the start for 2028. On the current schedule, a student entering in July 2027 would face the school's Step 1 deadline around February 2029, just as the new model begins. Step 2 CK would follow by about late August 2030, five months into year 4.

• A failing course grade goes to the Student Professionalism and Academic Review Committee (SPARC), which can issue a warning, probation or dismissal, or require you to repeat a course or a year.
• Graduation requires passing all courses plus Step 1, Step 2 CK and the final Immersion clinical performance exam (CPX). You may make at most three attempts at each Step exam, and a third failure means dismissal.
• The 2027-entry dates are worked out from the 2026-27 calendars, the latest the school has published. The USMLE says it will publish each year's testing dates more than a year ahead, and it has urged schools to review rules on when students must test.
• The LCME accredits MD programs in the United States, and its accreditation is what makes students in an MD program like this one eligible to sit the USMLE. The school reports that after a February 2024 visit the LCME continued its full accreditation for eight years; the LCME directory lists the next survey for 2031-32.

Both campuses are full four-year campuses. In Winston-Salem, classes are at the Bowman Gray Center for Medical Education in the Innovation Quarter, about two miles from Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. In Charlotte, the Howard R. Levine Center for Education at The Pearl sits a few blocks from Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center (CMC). CMC is an 874-bed academic hospital and a Level I trauma center, the highest trauma designation, and trains more than 300 residents.

Campus assignment works by preference. After acceptance you choose Charlotte, Winston-Salem or no preference, but your choice is not guaranteed, and you enroll knowing you may be placed at either campus. Swaps between students are not allowed. You can ask to change within five business days of your assignment, or later as a current student, but only for a compelling need such as a medical emergency or family care responsibilities.

Clerkships run on both campuses, mostly in blocks. Some older school pages call Charlotte's longitudinal clerkship family medicine; the 2026-27 handbook and the live Charlotte page say internal medicine. A request to switch clinical campus for the clerkship year must reach the registrar at least eight weeks before the academic year and show a compelling need, and is not guaranteed.

Beyond the two medical centers, electives and rotations use affiliated community hospitals, outpatient centers and Veterans Affairs centers in the region. For primary care rotations away from home, the Northwest Area Health Education Center (AHEC) arranges short-term housing, and South Piedmont AHEC houses students on short rotations around Charlotte.

Electives fill 16 weeks of Individualization, in four-week blocks, and the school says there are more than 100 elective courses across Charlotte and Winston-Salem. The full fourth-year catalog is on the national Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO) platform. Popular choices named by the school include diagnostic radiology, anatomic and clinical pathology, neuroradiology, clinical dermatology, global health care, genetics, nephrology and infectious diseases.

The public 2026-27 lists of electives open to visiting students show the range on each campus. Winston-Salem's include burn, transplant and trauma surgery, forensic pathology, refugee and immigrant healthcare and a stroke acting internship. Charlotte's run from medical toxicology and spinal cord injury medicine to a rural medicine experience and urban underserved family medicine.

Elective pages show how hands-on the final year is. On Charlotte's emergency medicine acting internship, for example, you work as an intern and present patients directly to the attending (senior) physicians on most shifts. About a third of your shifts are in the children's emergency department, and you spend a day visiting community resources on housing insecurity. The rotation ends with a self-directed project rather than a shelf exam.

Away rotations, electives at other institutions, can preview a residency program, offer experiences not available at Wake Forest, support research or introduce you to program directors. Interview absences are capped at two days on an acting internship or critical care rotation and three on other four-week electives. Global health electives last at least a month and are arranged through the Office of Global Health; the medical center has formal affiliations with universities in Japan, Norway, Korea and Austria.

Research is optional, but there are several routes in. The Medical Student Research Program (MSRP) is a competitive nine-week, full-time summer project between years 1 and 2. You work 40 hours a week with a faculty mentor on basic, clinical or community research, attend a research ethics workshop and lecture series, and receive a modest stipend. Every participant presents a poster at Medical Student Research Day each October, held on both campuses.

Programs of Distinction let you go deeper alongside the curriculum. You can complete one Scholarly Concentration, which appears on your transcript, and join as many Scholarly Programs as you like. Concentrations as of spring 2026 are Global Health (a 20-month curriculum with a mentored capstone project), Community Health and Advocacy, Interprofessional Medical Education, MAESTRO (medical Spanish) and, in Winston-Salem, Wilderness Medicine.

Scholarly Programs are often campus-specific. Examples include point-of-care ultrasound, rural medicine, radiology and pathology scholars and culinary medicine. Charlotte also has a 15-month research literacy program, Students Pursuing Advancement in Research (SPAR), and a 50-hour Surgery Scholars program. In year 4 you can take research electives, and research or advanced-degree leave lets students in good standing step out for a project or another degree.

The MD/PhD, run with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, typically takes seven years and comes with tuition scholarships. You choose from eight graduate programs, including neuroscience, cancer biology and biomedical engineering, and defend the PhD before returning to clinical training. You keep up clinical skills in an outpatient clinic during the PhD years. The program's published timeline still follows an older version of the MD calendar.

The MD/MS in Translational and Health System Science trains clinical researchers. Most students take a leave after year 3, start the master's in late August at the Innovation Quarter and finish about a year later, with a capstone built on grant-writing skills. Two shorter certificates suit students who do not want the full MS. The MD/MA in Bioethics adds one year, August to August, taken after third-year clerkships or early fourth-year rotations.

The Bowman Gray Center for Medical Education is the Winston-Salem base, built for in-person and remote learning. It holds the anatomy lab, a clinical skills lab, patient simulation suites, a tiered classroom and study spaces, with the Houses and student lockers on the third floor. The Coy C. Carpenter Library has study space in each campus's teaching building and assigns each student group a dedicated librarian.

In Charlotte, the 14-story Howard R. Levine Center for Education at The Pearl also houses Carolinas College of Health Sciences, so medical, nursing and allied health students train in one building. It includes an advanced clinical skills lab, a virtual anatomy lab and a plastinated anatomy lab, with the Charlotte Houses, lockers and a student health clinic on the sixth floor.

Simulation runs through the Center for Experiential and Applied Learning (CEAL). Its rooms replicate an emergency room, trauma room, operating room and inpatient and outpatient rooms, with recording equipment and debriefing rooms. High-fidelity manikins have breath sounds, a heartbeat, a pulse and live monitor readings, and allow procedures such as intubation, defibrillation and chest tube placement. Charlotte's simulation center lets learners practice procedures and the care of acutely ill patients.

At matriculation you are randomly assigned to a House, a learning community you stay in for all four years. Winston-Salem has four (Blue, Green, Red and Yellow) and Charlotte two (Green and Yellow), each with its own space for studying and relaxing. Houses mix students from every class year, plan their own events and competitions, and are the base for advising and mentoring.

Each House has a Personal and Professional Development (PPD) coach from the Center for Personal and Professional Development, who stays with you from orientation to graduation. Coaching covers academic success, career exploration, wellbeing and community, with at least four meetings in year 1, one-on-one and in House meetings, and two in year 2. Coaches' offices sit beside the Houses, and you can book or walk in.

You are also paired with a faculty advisor assigned through your House. Advisors meet their group of four students at least once a semester, start career exploration early and guide you through the residency application, with meetings required as you begin Individualization. Workshops in years 3 and 4 cover CVs, personal statements, the MSPE, interviews and the Match.

For academics, the Academic Support team builds individual study plans, coaches study strategy and time management, and runs preparation programs for Step 1 and Step 2 CK. Trained second- to fourth-year students offer free one-on-one and group tutoring, and a peer group, Dedicated Deacs, pairs third-years with second-years during Step 1 study. Wake Forest University's Center for Learning, Access, and Student Success (CLASS) handles disability accommodations and academic coaching.

Counseling and Well-Being Services offers free, confidential counseling on weekdays from 8:30 am to 5 pm, in person or virtually on both campuses, plus a 24/7 emergency helpline. Chaplains offer spiritual care on each campus.