The Washington University School of Medicine MD program

Phase 1 is built from seven Foundational Science Modules, each organized around a function or structure of the body. Every module teaches basic and clinical science alongside social and health systems science, and all share a similar structure. In Circulation and Breathing, for example, anatomy, histology and physiology sit beside heart and lung disease and its diagnostic tests, and you start using a stethoscope.

The curriculum also runs on threads, each with named faculty leads in the 2026-27 Bulletin. They include basic sciences such as anatomy and pharmacology, clinical skills and diagnostic reasoning, ethics and law, health equity and justice, health systems science, professional identity formation and artificial intelligence. Service learning is built in: in Phase 1 you volunteer at three separate community sites.

Teaching changes shape later. Each clerkship opens with a week of specialty foundations taught around signs and symptoms, revisiting Phase 1 science, and closes with an ARCC week for assessment, reflection, coaching and community. In Phase 3, on Advanced Clinical Rotations (ACRs), you work close to the level of an intern, a first-year resident doctor, while the KISCs bring you back to the classroom and lab.

In Phase 1 most instruction falls on weekday mornings. Two or three afternoons a week go to activity-based sessions, such as clinical skills training, coaching, community engagement, advocacy, education and research. A student writing in the 2025-26 guide describes modules of about seven weeks with exams typically twice per module.

School policy caps the load. In the classroom courses of Phase 1, required learning activities, including set preparation, take no more than 35 hours a week. During clinical immersions the cap is 50 hours, covering clinical work, classroom sessions, coaching and online work.

Clerkships run under a duty-hour policy: no more than 80 clinical hours a week, averaged over four weeks, and at least 10 hours off between shifts. You get at least four 24-hour periods off in every four weeks, overnight call no more than every third night and every official university holiday off.

Anatomy is taught by dissection. In the 2026-27 Dis-Orientation Guide, which first-year students write each year, two anatomy faculty from the Department of Neuroscience describe the lab. You dissect a donated body as a team of four, working through the structures set for each week, with faculty and teaching assistants there to help. They stress learning the language and concepts of anatomy rather than every detail.

The Department of Neuroscience trains every MD and MD/PhD student in anatomy and also teaches histology and neuroscience in the Gateway Curriculum. The 2026-27 Bulletin lists anatomy and embryology as one of the basic science threads, with two thread leads. Bodies come through the university's Body Donor Program, and each year medical students organize a ceremony to honor the donors and their loved ones.

In his welcome in the same guide, the assistant dean for admissions places the gross anatomy lab on the top floor of one of the school's historic buildings. It has windows on three sides and teaching specimens collected over the years. The Phase 3 catalog also includes a four-week non-clinical elective called Advanced Dissection, offered by the Department of Neuroscience.

Patient contact begins in a protected setting. You learn to take histories and examine patients soon after starting, practicing with standardized patients from the first month and getting feedback on videotaped encounters. Fourth-year students mentor first-years in pairs through the clinical skills course. Students say these mentors take them into the hospital early in year 1 to meet patients and practice history taking.

The immersions are the big step; a student in the 2026-27 guide says their order is assigned at random. In one example the school gives, immersion students spend time on radiology's ultrasound service, where diagnostic scans and biopsies are done. Phase 1 students may take histories and examine patients under indirect supervision, meaning a supervisor is on site and immediately available, but observe or assist with procedures only under continuous direct supervision.

Students' accounts in the guide show the settings. On the ambulatory/ED immersion you spend a few days a week in the emergency department, rotating through pods such as triage, psychiatric, trauma and discharge. The other days are at an outpatient site, such as an FQHC or a specialty or primary care clinic. On the inpatient immersion students pre-round, checking on their own patients before the team's rounds, and present on rounds, much as clerkship students do.

The Department of Emergency Medicine says every student rotates through emergency departments during the immersions, at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and community emergency departments or at St. Louis Children's Hospital. Obstetrics and gynecology runs two procedural immersion sites, labor and delivery and gynecologic oncology, each taking two students at a time.

Assessment is competency-based. You are measured against six domains of program objectives: foundational knowledge for practice, patient care, interpersonal and communication skills, professionalism, systems-based practice, and practice-based learning and improvement. Tests, essays, clinical observation, peer assessment, standardized patients, simulations and projects feed a portfolio that the Competency Attainment Committee, a faculty committee, reviews. Every required course or clerkship of four weeks or more must give you formative feedback by its midpoint.

Phase 1 courses earn credit or no credit, and at the end of the phase you are recorded as competent or not in each domain. Each clerkship is judged competent or not in patient care. At the end of Phase 2 you can earn competent with distinction in foundational knowledge, patient care, and interpersonal and communication skills. At the end of Phase 3 distinction is possible in systems-based practice and in practice-based learning and improvement.

The assistant dean for student assessment, writing in the 2025-26 student guide, likened Phase 2 distinction to honors, though any number of students can earn it. She also explained that you cannot fail out on a single exam or module. Using a 70% threshold as her example, she said a miss does not mean retaking the module, because performance is tracked across courses and assessment types. Exam grade distributions are not shared with the class.

The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) accredits MD programs in the United States. Its directory, updated July 22, 2026, lists WashU with full accreditation and a next survey in 2030-31. For US MD students, the Bulletin explains, LCME accreditation is what makes them eligible to sit the USMLE. Step 1 tests the sciences behind medicine and has been pass or fail since 2022; Step 2 CK tests how you apply clinical knowledge to patient care.

WashU schedules Step 1 after Phase 1 and Step 2 CK during Phase 3. The Bulletin's USMLE policy, last approved December 4, 2023, expects you to complete both by September 1 of the fall before you graduate, so residency programs see your scores. To be certified for the Match you need passing score reports by the end of January of your graduation year. You must take both exams to graduate, but passing them is not a graduation requirement.

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. On the current schedule, a student entering in August 2027 would finish Step 1 study around December 2028 and sit Step 1 then or in early January 2029, at or just before the switch. Step 2 CK would fall in Phase 3, in 2030, under the new model. The 2027-28 Bulletin and calendar are not yet published.

• Clerkship exams: students sit National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) subject exams, the national end-of-clerkship tests often called shelf exams, and are released from clinical work by 5 p.m. the evening before. The registrar's clerkship exams are web-based, 110 questions in 2 hours 45 minutes, on a Monday and Tuesday near each block's end.
• End of Phase 1: the one-week Capstone closes with the CBSE examination; CBSE is the usual abbreviation for the NBME's Comprehensive Basic Science Exam.
• Graduation: you must pass the Comprehensive Clinical Exam (CCX), listed in the Bulletin as MEDICINE 8330, a course that carries no credit. A February 2026 Department of Medicine page says its clerkship leaders create, edit and oversee the grading of standardized patient assessments, including Phase 3 CCX examinations.

Your clinical base is the Washington University Medical Campus, 186 acres on the east side of Forest Park. Barnes-Jewish Hospital and St. Louis Children's Hospital stand on it, both staffed by WashU Medicine physicians, part of BJC HealthCare and holding about 1,893 beds between them. Most clinical assignments are here. Patients come from city, suburban and rural communities, and the school describes Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's as important safety-net hospitals that provide a large amount of care for underserved patients.

The admissions FAQ also names Missouri Baptist Medical Center, the VA medical center, Progress West, two FQHCs, Care STL and Affinia, and primary care preceptors in rural Missouri. Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital in Creve Coeur appears in course descriptions for surgery and emergency medicine.

Off-campus rotations follow the Bulletin's transportation policy, and the school does not reimburse gas, mileage, parking or fares. Not having a car is not in itself a reason to change an assignment, so carpools, ride services, transit, rental cars, biking and walking are the suggested options.

A list of off-campus rotations is updated each year, travel is tracked centrally to share those assignments fairly, and you can sometimes rank choices in advance. You can also ask the Registrar's Office in writing for a different site within two weeks of an assignment's release, and directors may allow trades between classmates.

Phase 3 holds 32 weeks of electives. The 2026-27 Bulletin lists clinical electives of two or four weeks across departments, from medical toxicology, emergency ultrasound and emergency medical services to dermatology, child abuse pediatrics and autopsy pathology. Non-clinical options include clinical informatics, patient safety and quality improvement, care of the homeless, forensic psychiatry, health law and humanities in medicine.

Family medicine is offered as Community-Based Family Medicine at Affinia Healthcare, a two-week clinical elective at its health centers. You see patients of all ages, from well-child checks and prenatal care to chronic disease and office procedures. The school says it has no Department of Family Medicine or family medicine residency, though it supports students who match into the field.

You can also design your own time. EXPLORE electives give credit for a scholarly project, usually one to four months long, approved in advance by a pathway lead. Proposals are due at least four weeks before you start, or three months ahead for projects needing VA resources. Reading electives, about 30 hours a week, and special study electives cover topics or clinical experiences outside the catalog.

Away electives at other institutions can fill 1 to 12 weeks, and international away electives 1 to 4 weeks, according to the Bulletin's requirements table. The global health page adds that up to 16 weeks of EXPLORE elective time can be spent abroad, with grants available. Global health rotations can use 12 partner sites, in countries including South Korea, Japan, Ghana and Australia, or 64 global partners approved by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

Research is not required, and the Bulletin's graduation requirements include no thesis. The school's participation figures vary by page: over 95% complete a research project, says the admissions curriculum page; more than 90% take part in research, says the admissions FAQ.

The MD5 program adds a year of full-time independent research with a WashU faculty mentor, paid by a stipend from the Office of Medical Student Research and Scholarship. There is no thesis, but you submit a final report and your mentor grades the year pass or fail. The wider Medical Scholars Program also includes the Clinical Research Training Center's TL1-Intensive, a mentored clinical research year, and a paid Health Equity Fellowship for Phase 3 students.

One-year master's options include the Master of Science in Clinical Investigation (MSCI), 33 credits ending in a manuscript submitted to a journal, and the 10-month Master of Population Health Sciences (MPHS), with no thesis. There is also a Master of Business Administration (MBA) with the Olin Business School. For the Master of Public Health (MPH), you apply during the clerkship phase and complete it in your fourth year. The Bulletin names the Bursky School of Public Health for the MPH; the Medical Scholars Program page still names the Brown School.

For the one-year master's programs and the MD5 year, the time-to-graduation policy sets a seven-year limit, against six years for the standard MD. There is also an MD/MS in Biomedical Data Science and AI, with tracks in biostatistics, data science and biomedical informatics.

The Roy Vagelos MSTP dates from 1969 and takes an average of 25 students a year, about a fifth of the entering class, says the Bulletin. MSTP students do a July research rotation, Phase 1 with a weekly MSTP Thread course and a second lab rotation, then three to five years on the PhD. They return for clerkships and a shorter Phase 3 without KISCs, and in 2026-27 all receive a stipend, health coverage and full tuition remission.

The Bulletin puts the length at seven or eight years with at least three years of research; the MSTP site says eight on average and as little as seven. The time-to-graduation policy allows 9 to 13 years at most. PhDs are in Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences programs or biomedical engineering, and you can apply with your medical school application or transfer in later.

The Farrell Learning and Teaching Center, a six-story building completed in 2005, is the main teaching building. It has two auditoriums, classrooms and labs, and a study carrel with secure storage for every first- and second-year student. Its Clinical Skills Instruction Suite has 13 simulated outpatient clinic rooms and two inpatient rooms, where faculty and peers watch your standardized patient encounters live and sessions are recorded.

Simulation is used in all three phases: clinical skills in Phase 1, foundational skills for clerkships in Phase 2 and preparation for internship in Phase 3. The Immersive Learning Center combines the Standardized Patient and Howard and Joyce Wood Simulation Centers. Its own site lists over 11,000 square feet with 17 exam rooms, four simulation suites, a task-training room and four conference rooms, and trainers for skills such as airway management, lumbar punctures and ultrasound.

The Bernard Becker Medical Library is open to students 24 hours a day and has run a Center for Health and Science Communication since fall 2021. Course materials, schedules and exams sit on Keystone, the school's learning platform, and you must own a cellphone and a laptop that meets the school's laptop guidelines.

Support starts with your faculty coach, who stays with you from the first day to graduation and gets to know your goals, values and struggles. Coaches attest twice a year that they have given you narrative feedback, written comments on your knowledge, skills and behavior.

Learning communities take the form of three academic societies, Cori, Erlanger-Graham and Lowry-Moore, formed by the faculty in 1985. Each hosts about three social events a year, usually off campus, and society student leads run the Big Sib program, which matches every entering student with a second-year student with similar interests or background. Society events are encouraged but optional.

The Office of Academic Support and Career Development arranges free one-on-one tutoring by senior students or residents, including Step 1 and Step 2 CK tutors who help plan your study. The admissions FAQ says every student gets a UWorld question bank subscription for Step 1 and Step 2, plus practice exam vouchers. There is also disability support, a writing center and funding for travel to present scholarly work.

For well-being, trained Peer Advocates from every phase listen and point you to mistreatment reporting and mental health support, answering requests within 24 hours. Each class has a student wellness officer, students organize a Wellness Week each spring, and the Office of the Ombuds offers confidential, off-the-record help.