USF Health Morsani College of Medicine
Tampa, FL · Tampa General Hospital · 140 students per class
Program Statistics
$99M
NIH funding · FY2025
Clinical training & research
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★★★★★Tampa General Hospital
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★★★★★James A. Haley Veterans' Hospital
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Moffitt Cancer Center
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Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital
★ CMS overall hospital rating (1–5). Children's, cancer and psychiatric hospitals aren't rated.
$99M
NIH · FY2025
+32% since FY2021
Top NIH-funded departments
- Internal Medicine / Medicine$57M
- Physiology$14M
- Biochemistry$10M
- NCI Comprehensive Cancer Center (affiliate)
- 59 recruiting clinical trials
Programs & admissions
Tracks & programs
- Scholarly Concentrationseleven focus areas
- SELECTending with the Class of 2027
- Minimums
- No minimum GPA or MCAT
- Early Decision
- MCAT 518+ (126+ per section) and GPA 3.8+
Sources: USF Health — Class of 2030 · USF Health MD Cost of Attendance · USF MD Clinical Teaching Sites · USF MD Educational Programs (SELECT) · USF MD Admissions FAQ · NCI-Designated Cancer Centers · Census QuickFacts (Hillsborough County, FL) · NIH RePORTER · ClinicalTrials.gov · CMS Care Compare
Program Highlights
Curriculum
USF's curriculum is organ-based, with lectures posted ahead of time and recorded; Brian James says only about a quarter of the class attends live. A Doctoring course gives steady practice with standardized patients, and Chetna Thawani describes scenarios from sexual-history taking to an interprofessional emergency simulation.
Every core student joins one of eleven Scholarly Concentrations, such as law and medicine, business and medicine, or nutrition and medicine, to explore an interest alongside the core curriculum.
Learning Communities
Students are sorted into Collegia, learning communities Chetna compares to Hogwarts houses, for anatomy lab, doctoring groups, and friendly inter-Collegia competitions. Each has a career adviser, which makes it easy to get guidance from advisers and upperclassmen.
Both students praise how fast the school responds: a student board relays feedback on lecturers and exams, and faculty act on it quickly.
Clinical Training
Tampa General Hospital, a 985-bed facility with the area's only Level 1 trauma and burn unit, is the primary clinical training site. Students also train at the James A. Haley VA across from campus, Moffitt Cancer Center, and Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital.
The SELECT program, which sent students to Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley for clinical years, is being phased out after its graduating class of 2027.
Downtown Tampa
The medical school has moved downtown, near the Riverwalk, restaurants, and CAMLS, the patient simulation center. Brian highlights a fast-growing city with every major sport nearby: the Lightning a few blocks away, the Buccaneers 10 minutes, and the Rays in St. Petersburg.
USF has no minimum GPA or MCAT; Early Decision applicants need at least a 518 MCAT and a 3.8 GPA.
Sources: DocStory interviews with Brian James and Chetna Thawani · USF MD Clinical Teaching Sites · USF MD Educational Programs (SELECT) · USF MD Admissions FAQ
Student Voices
2 interviews from current and former USF Morsani students
"We have these things kind of like Hogwarts houses, called Collegias, which are 'learning communities' that we're split into for things like anatomy lab, doctoring groups, etc."
"The faculty here are very receptive to feedback and will accommodate almost immediately. Also we have a lot of standardized patients … to help hone in our skills."