The Wayne State University School of Medicine MD program

The pre-clerkship phase runs from July of year 1 to March of year 2 in terms of about 12 weeks. Until the Step 1 period, each term pairs one 10-credit basic science course with longitudinal courses: Clinical Skills, P4 and Service Learning, joined in Segment 2 by the Clinical Experiential Course. This block structure, with breaks between terms, dates from April 2021 and kept the systems-based model first introduced in 2018.

Within each course, the sciences are taught together for one system at a time. In Human Body Foundations you study the anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, histology and genetics of each organ system alongside dissection. Human Disease Foundations covers pathology, pathophysiology, microbiology, immunology, genetics and pharmacology for the same systems.

In the clerkship year, the longitudinal Clinical Reasoning, Integration, Skills for Practice (CRISP) course meets monthly on clinical reasoning, interprofessional care, ultrasound, leadership, career planning and wellness. In Segment 4, Clinical Reasoning Using Integrated Skills in Education (CRUISE) continues that work. Teaching and Learning in Medical Education (TLMed) trains you to teach medical students through teaching assignments, live online workshops and a capstone project.

The school caps the pre-clerkship workload at an average of 50 hours a week across a term, excluding breaks. That total counts watching lectures, preparation, required sessions, clinical assignments and set self-directed study time, but not extra exam preparation, electives or personal time.

In a year 1 week on the 2026-27 schedule, you might have a three-hour gross anatomy lab in the afternoon, 90-minute histology and physiology sessions in the mornings, and P4 on some Thursday mornings. Interactive radiological anatomy runs on Zoom from 4:30 to 6 p.m. on some evenings, and each term you attend three or four assigned Clinical Skills sessions.

Exams set the rhythm. Each year 1 course has three cumulative three-hour morning exams, the last in its final week alongside a National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) exam and the gross anatomy practical. In Segment 2, your Clinical Experiential Course visits fall on Tuesday mornings, Wednesdays or Thursday afternoons.

Anatomy is taught through full-body cadaver dissection across all three Human Body Foundations courses in year 1. Human Body Foundations I starts with the musculoskeletal system, working through the upper limb and back and then the lower limb. Human Body Foundations II moves to the chest, heart and abdomen, and Human Body Foundations III finishes with the pelvis, neck, skull, orbit and head.

The 2026-27 year 1 schedule lists 30 numbered three-hour dissection labs after an introductory session, with the class divided into two lab groups. Interactive radiological anatomy sessions on Zoom and ultrasound sessions cover the same body regions.

Each term ends with a gross anatomy practical exam that runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the 2026-27 schedule. Classmates in the dissection lab also rate each other's preparation, participation and professionalism, with written comments. Anatomy is taught by the Department of Ophthalmology, Visual and Anatomical Sciences, which also oversees the Body Bequest Program.

In year 4, the Gross Anatomy Teaching Lab elective has you teach first-year students dissection skills while reviewing anatomy before residency. The May 2026 course list placed it in Gordon H. Scott Hall and said it was open to students who had joined the prosector program after their own first-year anatomy course.

Patient contact starts in a simulated setting. Clinical Skills begins in your first term, and in year 1 you practice history taking and the physical examination with standardized patients at the school's clinical skills center. Service Learning also begins in July; in 2026 the first term included a Detroit clean-up project with Better Way and the City of Detroit.

Through the Wayne Trained program, launched in 2024, family physicians, many of them Wayne State graduates, take you through six clinical scenarios across years 1 and 2. Small-group discussions with faculty coaches follow the clinical sessions.

From April of year 1 to December of year 2, the Clinical Experiential Course pairs each student with a community preceptor in primary care clinics. The workload policy budgets two to three and a half hours a week for it, with small-group sessions at school. Clinical Skills in this period covers focused exams through pediatrics, general surgery, emergency medicine, urology and internal medicine.

Full-time clinical work begins with clerkships in April of year 2, after a Clinical Investiture ceremony at which students recite the Wayne State Pledge of Ethics and Professionalism. Outside the curriculum, students also run free clinics such as Street Medicine Detroit, which cares for people experiencing homelessness on the streets.

Each pre-clerkship basic science course has at least three summative exams and ends with an NBME exam customized to what was taught. Faculty-written questions include multiple-choice clinical and lab vignettes, fill-in-the-blank and short answers. Optional weekly practice quizzes, posted on Friday afternoons, do not count toward your grade.

To pass a Segment 1 or 2 course you need a combined score of at least 70%. Grades go on your transcript as Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory, and Honors grades are reserved for Segments 3 and 4. Your percentages still count: averaged across the Foundations courses, they form an end-of-segment score, and students one standard deviation or more above the class mean earn End of Segment Honors.

Clerkship grades are Honors, Satisfactory with commendation (S+), Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory or Incomplete. You must pass every component: the clinical evaluation, assignments and the NBME subject exam. Honors requires outstanding work in all of them. Preceptors rate you on a five-point scale, and some clerkships add oral exams, OSCEs or written assignments. Segment 4 electives are graded Honors, Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory.

Step 1, which tests the basic sciences, has been reported only as pass or fail since January 26, 2022. The LCME, which accredits MD programs in the United States, lists Wayne State's program as fully accredited, with its next survey in 2030-31. That accreditation makes its students eligible for Step 1 and Step 2 CK; students at osteopathic (DO) and international schools qualify through other routes.

You must pass Step 1 to start clerkships, in no more than four attempts and within a year of finishing Human Disease Foundations III. If you miss the April 1 start, you join clerkships a year later. You register for a January-to-March window in year 2 (January to March 2027 for the Class of 2029). You take a Comprehensive Basic Science Self-Assessment (CBSSA) practice exam during CSI. You then sit Step 1 after Step 1 Enhancement, by the school's sit-by date in early March (March 2 in 2026).

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 announcement had named 2028. On the current schedule, a student entering in 2027 would begin dedicated Step 1 study in January 2029 and sit the exam in about February or early March, shortly after the switch. Step 2 CK, due by October 31, 2030, would also fall under the new model. These are projections from the current calendar, not published dates.

• Step 2 CK must be taken by October 31 after the clerkship year and passed by April 1 of your graduation year. The pass must be posted by February 1 for the school to certify you for the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) Match, the national residency match.
• You can re-sit one failed Human Body or Human Disease Foundations course by re-examination; the pre-clerkship phase allows at most two course failures.
• Acting internships are graded on six assessments of Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs), core tasks of a new resident such as patient handovers, plus a narrative evaluation.
• The Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE) is the school's letter for residency applications. It places you in one of five groups, from Exceptional (about 5%) to Good (about 20%), based on pre-clerkship scores, clerkship grades and honors.
• You must complete every degree requirement within seven years of starting.

Your clinical training is spread across Detroit and its suburbs rather than one teaching hospital, and the school says it trains students at more than 70 clinical sites. Its clinical partners page lists the DMC, a system with more than 2,000 licensed beds, and Henry Ford Health. It also lists Corewell Health Dearborn Hospital, Trinity Health's Livonia and Oakland hospitals, the John D. Dingell VA Medical Center, the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute and Michigan Healthcare Professionals (MHP).

For the clerkship year you are assigned to a clinical campus, by availability after the school surveys your ranked preferences, and you cannot swap with classmates. Your family medicine preceptor depends on your campus, though you can take that clerkship elsewhere in Michigan if you arrange your own transport and housing.

Department pages list clerkship sites, some under older hospital names. The neurology clerkship lists four DMC hospitals (Detroit Receiving, Harper, Sinai-Grace and Children's Hospital of Michigan), Henry Ford Hospital, St. John Hospital (now Henry Ford St. John) and the VA medical center. It also lists St. Joseph Mercy Oakland (now Trinity Health Oakland) in Pontiac and a St. Joseph Mercy site in Clinton Township.

Trauma care varies by site. The partners page lists Level I trauma centers, the highest level, at Henry Ford Hospital, an 877-bed hospital in Detroit's New Center area, and at the 612-bed Henry Ford St. John Hospital in Detroit. The emergency medicine department describes the DMC's Detroit Receiving Hospital as an urban Level I trauma center. The suburban hospitals on the partners page are Level II trauma centers.

A May 15, 2026 web-archive copy of the fourth-year course list placed the emergency medicine clerkship at Detroit Receiving, Sinai-Grace, Henry Ford and Henry Ford St. John hospitals, and the pediatric acting internship at Children's Hospital of Michigan. In both clinical segments, duty hours are capped at 80 a week, averaged over four weeks, with one day off in seven.

In Segments 1 and 2 you can add one optional elective track if you are in good academic standing. Choices include research, medical education research, community engagement, medical quality improvement, Business of Medicine and the Leadership and External Affairs Development/Medical Political Action (LEAD/MPAC) advocacy elective. Year 1 electives run from October to March and year 2 electives from July to December, and failing a course drops you from yours.

Most elective choice comes in Segment 4. You need two home clinical months outside your intended specialty and at least one in-person clinical elective each term. You can take no more than five months in your specialty, three away months at institutions not affiliated with the school, one research or independent study month and one non-patient-care elective. Inpatient clinical electives are now called sub-internships.

Away electives go through the Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO) service of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), or need an affiliation agreement requested 60 to 90 days ahead. One away month can be an international elective, approved by the Director of Global Health and Education; allow six months to arrange it. Through the Cooperative Electives Exchange, electives at the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Michigan State's osteopathic college earn full credit.

In the 2026-27 catalog, Street Medicine: Detroit includes 120 clinical hours caring for people experiencing homelessness. Culinary Medicine runs with the national group Health Meets Food. Mi-ABLE, a disability care elective, runs with the Henry Ford Health GROW Center and University of Michigan MDisability. Others include Rural Family Medicine, Forensic Pathology, Emergency Medical Services and dozens of specialty sub-internships.

In the research elective track, you find a mentor, learn to critique papers and write a mini-review and research proposal in year 1. In year 2 you do supervised lab research and give a research presentation. The admissions office says about 60% of students take part in research, supported by the Office of Medical Student Research.

Scholarly Concentrations are optional longitudinal projects with a mentor in one of six areas: basic biomedical research; population health; public health, advocacy and community engagement; global health; medical education; and women's health. You declare by January 10 of year 2, then present a poster at research day and a talk at the annual Scholarly Concentrations event. Recognition runs from a notation in your residency application letters to Distinction, which needs honors in two related year 4 rotations and a submitted publication.

The M.D./Ph.D. program takes up to six students a year and averages seven to eight years. You take Step 1 by the end of February of year 2. Once you pass, you leave the medical curriculum for research rotations and a Ph.D. in a Wayne State doctoral program doing biomedical research. You return to clerkships in March of the year you defend. The M.D./M.S. in Medical Research, open to second- and third-year students, requires 30 credits, including an 8-credit thesis, and leaves the M.D. requirements unchanged.

The four-year M.D./M.B.A. with the Mike Ilitch School of Business starts with the Business of Medicine elective in year 1; you apply in January and begin business courses in April. M.B.A. classes meet on Thursday evenings and many Saturdays in year 2. You finish all but three core courses before clerkships, and the rest fall in Segment 4. The 2026-27 handbook puts the ideal cohort at about 30. The five-year M.D./M.P.H. adds a master's in public health accredited by the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH).

The Three-Year M.D. takes up to 20 students a class who already know their specialty: anesthesiology, dermatology, family medicine, internal medicine, otolaryngology or preventive medicine. You apply after acceptance to the four-year M.D. and take a research or medical education research elective in years 1 and 2. Clerkship preparation lasts three weeks instead of seven, and clerkships start four weeks early. Graduates are ranked to match by their chosen Wayne State residency program, and the track cannot be combined with a joint degree.

The Richard J. Mazurek, M.D., Medical Education Commons opened in June 2009 at 320 E. Canfield St. It houses the Shiffman Medical Library, classrooms and labs, the computer labs where you take exams, and the Kado Family Clinical Skills Center, where you train with standardized patients and high-fidelity simulation.

Gordon H. Scott Hall of Basic Medical Sciences, opened in 1971, holds facilities for pre-clinical and basic science teaching.

Every student is assigned to one of eight color-coded Warrior M.D. Houses, learning communities that stay with you from orientation to graduation. Houses bring all four classes together for social events and Mentor Meet-Ups on Detroit's leading health disparities, and student peer mentors and house coordinators help new students settle in.

Coaching runs through the houses. In the one-credit Wayne Trained and Coaching Professional Development course, faculty coaches meet you in small groups to discuss professionalism, professional identity, the MSPE and career goals, and one-on-one coaching is available. The approach follows the American Medical Association's Master Adaptive Learner framework for becoming a self-directed, lifelong learner.

Each class has designated counselors who stay with you for all four years and meet you at least once a year. They arrange referrals for mental health care rather than providing therapy themselves. The Office of Learning and Teaching offers learning skills support. After Human Disease Foundations II, students judged at high risk of failing Step 1 must meet the Vice Dean of Medical Education and that office.

Career advising runs across all four years, with specialty interest groups, CV and personal statement clinics, an annual regional residency recruitment fair, year 3 specialty advising, mock interviews and a rank order list workshop. In Segment 4, a dedicated faculty advisor helps you build your schedule.