The Colleges

Students must successfully complete Phase II Curriculum before proceeding to Phase III.

Faculty members and students interested in common career activities are grouped into academic colleges based on differing approaches to clinical reasoning and diagnostic approaches. Medical students select one of five colleges during the latter part of their third year based on career interest or enrollment in special programs. The colleges are designed to:

• strengthen career advising
• improve the quality and selection of electives
• provide a means of honing clinical skills
• stimulate discussion of new findings in the basic, social, and clinical sciences relevant to the future practice of medicine

College activities include an introductory course focused on advanced clinical skills and decision making, a monthly series of evening seminars, a longitudinal academic activity that can be either teaching or scholarship, and regular advisory meetings.

Acute Care College

The mission of the Acute Care College is to provide mentorship, foster time-based decision making, broaden clinical correlation of Physiology, Anatomy and Pharmacology to Acute Care, and probe ethical and psychosocial aspects of crisis management.

The curriculum consists of the week-long Foundations Course at the beginning of the senior year and a series of monthly meetings that address:

1. didactic sessions focusing on acute management
2. career preparation seminars
3. physician well-being and life strategies after medical school.

Typical careers represented by the Acute Care College are Anesthesiology; Emergency Medicine; Adult Critical Care (Cardiology, Pulmonary Medicine and Hospitalist); and Pediatric Critical Care (Cardiology and Neonatology).

Co-Chairs: Ed Ha, MD and Tomer Begaz, MD
Vice Chairs:  Jaime Jordan, MD, Alexandra Milin, MD and Jennifer Nguyen-Lee, MD
Coordinator: Cindy Wang

Applied Anatomy College 

The mission of the Applied Anatomy College is to develop the knowledge and skills to support a career choice in those specialties in which expertise in anatomy is critical. The typical careers in the College of Applied Anatomy are Surgery and the Surgical Subspecialties (i.e. General, Gynecology, Head & Neck, Neurosurgery, Oncology, Ophthalmology, Orthopaedics, Plastics, Thoracic, Urology and Vascular); Radiology, Radiation Oncology, and Pathology. The unifying theme is anatomical implications in medical practice. The faculty and students of the College of Applied Anatomy are committed to the development of knowledge and skills that will support the choice of a career in those specialties in which expertise in anatomy is critical to competency. Through organized activities, including personal advising and counseling, the college will create a meaningful adjunctive program for the medical school for its fourth-year students.

Co-Chairs: Formosa Chen, MD & Christian de Virgilio, MD 
Vice Chairs:  Devon Jeffcoat, MD & Aparna Sridhar, MD 
Coordinator: Cindy Wang

Academic Medicine College 

The mission of the Academic Medicine College is to develop an individualized educational pathway for those students who are considering a career in subspecialty Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, or Pathology; or for students who have remained actively engaged in research, enjoyed their STTP summer research project but have not had a chance to continue, or who are considering some type of academic career involving research and teaching.   Members of this college include all specialties, including surgical specialties, with a focus on academics. 

Chair: Gerald Lipshutz, MD  
Vice Chair: Rachel Brook, MD 
Coordinator: Cindy Wang

Primary Care College

Primary care is the provision of integrated, accessible health care services by clinicians who are accountable for addressing a large majority of personal health care needs, developing a sustained partnership with patients, and practicing in the context of family and community.   The Primary Care College’s mission is to train students to continue to attain the knowledge, skills and attitudes to become excellent generalists who are committed to upholding the highest ethical and professional standards of medicine including an emphasis on patient centered care; wellness and preventive care; the provision of timely and high quality medical care; delivering cost-effective health care; promoting health education; delivery of innovative healthcare;  and striving for high levels of patient satisfaction. Members of the Primary Care College include, but are not limited to, those with interests in General Internal Medicine, General Pediatrics, Family Medicine, Obstetrics/Gynecology, and Psychiatry.  As a part of the College, the faculty provide intensive mentoring for students applying for their residency positions, opportunities in community and service-learning activities, exposure to public health and public policy, and mentoring on research and other scholarly projects during the fourth year in preparation for Senior Scholarship Day. 

Chair: Allison Diamant, MD 
Vice Chairs: Rebecca Dudovitz, MD, Gifty Ntim, MD and Daniel T. Lee, MD 
Coordinator: Cindy Wang

Drew Urban Underserved College

Students enrolled in the Drew/UCLA Medical Education Program have selected the Urban/Underserved College at the Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science for their fourth year.  The Urban/Underserved College is committed to providing excellent didactic and practical training, and career counseling for individuals interested in serving urban, underserved populations.  Students enrolled in the College also complete a longitudinal research thesis project.  While the overall theme of the thesis project is to eliminate health care disparities, students have wide latitude to choose research projects and mentors across a spectrum of specialties with application to underserved communities.  The fourth-year medical students present their research thesis results at the Annual Medical Student Research Colloquium.  The Chair of the Urban/Underserved College is charged with planning scholarly and mentorship activities and career counseling.  College activities include clinical skills workshops, mentorship support program, dinner seminars, and community service.

Chair: Cesar Barba, MD 
Coordinator: Chaz Medlock

College Requirements

College Evening Seminars

The colleges will be holding a series of evening seminars addressing multiple topics throughout the course of the senior year. They will focus on a number of subjects, ranging from preparation for the residency application process, to the development of advanced clinical skills to the discussion of issues related, to career development and health policy, to name just a few. All senior students must attend 6 total evening seminars throughout the course of the year. This is a graduation requirement and students will be asked to document the evening seminars that they attended.

Individual College Requirements

In addition to the aforementioned requirements, each college has specific requirements as well. These are covered during the Intro to Colleges mandatory class meeting in the third-year and are available here.

Senior Scholarship

All senior students are required to submit an abstract and present a poster based on individual scholarly work for Senior Scholarship Day. This may be on-going work that the student has done or a new project. In addition to traditional clinical and basic science research, scholarly work can include quality improvement or medical education projects, case reports, or other scholarly work done with a faculty mentor. Any questions regarding selection of an appropriate scholarly project can be reviewed with the College Chairs. The College Chairs will also work with those students who want to develop a new project for the year and will provide guidance on preparing for presentation on Senior Scholarship Day.

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Foundations for Fourth Year

As a required foundations course, all senior students must successfully complete this one-week course in order to graduate and to enroll in 300- and 400-level coursework. This course is the first week of the MS4 curriculum and focuses on the development and reinforcement of core clinical skills that will be used in sub-internship rotations. The attendance policy for this course can be found here.

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Elective Coursework

 30 (or more) weeks of elective clerkships of which:

• 12 weeks must be sub-internship coursework; 300 and 400 level UCLA electives listed in MyCourses of which:
  • 3 weeks must be a 300 level clerkship of consecutive weeks
  • 3 weeks must be a 400 level clerkship of consecutive weeks
  • 3 weeks can be either a 300 or 400 level clerkship of consecutive weeks
  • 3 consecutive weeks of a College Approved ICU Elective & ICU Exam. All senior students are required to complete a three-week, 400 level Intensive Care Unit rotation from a list of approved rotations. In order to pass the ICU rotation, students must successfully complete a simulation and written exam on the final day of the ICU rotation. Students may not request an excused absence for the day of the ICU examination. If there is an emergency that will not allow a student to take the exam, it is the student’s responsibility to contact the ICU exam coordinator (Cindy Wang) and ICU exam director (Dr. Scott Hu - scotthu@mednet.ucla.edu) to arrange another date to take the ICU exam. Students who enroll in more than one ICU elective should take the ICU exam with their first ICU rotation.

• 6 of the 30 weeks may be non-clinical coursework (i.e. 100 level coursework or research, 600 level)
• May receive a maximum of 12 weeks of credit for “Away” electives. Please Note: “Away” electives do not fulfill the 12-week UCLA sub-internship requirement
• May receive a maximum of 4 weeks credit for the same clinical elective
• No retroactive credit will be granted. Elective must be approved and on schedule before starting elective.

For information on elective level designations, please click here.

Please submit the 4^th Year Elective proposal form through Qualtrics here. New elective proposals will be sent to the appropriate Director of 4th Year Medical Education for review and approval then reviewed and approved by the Medical Education Committee (MEC) semiannually. We recommend that all new elective submissions are submitted by the October 1^st deadline to have the approved electives listed and scheduled for the following academic year’s Course Catalog. The courses approved in April will be announced to the students via email as this is late add.

For an example, if an elective proposal was submitted on October 1^st, 2021 and is approved, this course will be added to the 2022-2023 Course Catalog, where students will select the courses in December 2021 prior to the lottery.

If an elective proposal was submitted on April 1^st, 2022 and is approved, this course will be announced to the current MS4 for manual enrollment process.

Submission Deadline	Review Month	Approved Course Added
October 1st	October MEC Meeting	Following academic year
April 1st	April MEC Meeting	Current academic year

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Assessment for Internship

DGSOM's capstone foundation course. This week-long course is designed to assess proficiency in key skills and activities that will be vital to functioning as a resident physician from the first day of internship. All students must complete this course in order to graduate. The attendance policy for this course can be found here.