Education

First year, Autumn (full-time status, total required units: 18**):

2 remaining credits: You may sign up for additional electives. If you do not enroll in electives, please enroll in GENE 299 (Directed Readings). There are multiple sections; you should sign up under Naik, S/NC, in order to reach a total of 18 units.

**If you register for >18 units, extra tuition fees will apply

First year, Winter (full-time status, total required units: 18**):

2 remaining credits: Sign up for any additional electives. If you have remaining credits, please enroll in GENE 299 (Directed Readings).  There are multiple sections; you should sign up under Naik, S/NC, in order to reach a total of 18 units.

**If you register for >18 units, extra tuition fees will apply

First year, Spring (full-time status, total required units: 18**):

2 remaining units: Sign up for any additional electives (this is a great quarter to take a research elective if you can). If you have remaining credits, please enroll in GENE 299 (Directed Readings).  

**If you register for >18 units, extra tuition fees will apply.

First year, Summer

Students will not sign up for any academic credits during this time. Students will complete clinical rotations on a full time (~40 hour/week) basis, work on their research projects, and complete online courses GENE 287 (Cardiovascular Genetics) and GENE 288 (Neurogenetics). All assignments for 287 and 288 are due by the end of summer and grades will be submitted at the end of fall quarter to align with your registration.

Second year, Autumn (full-time status, total required units: 10**):

If you would like to take an elective for 1 unit, reduce GENE 276 to 1.  If you take an elective for 2-3 units, reduce 276 to 1 unit and 283 to 1-2 units to reach 10 total.

**If you register for >10 units, extra tuition fees will apply

Second year, Winter & Spring (full-time status, total required units: 10**):

*Remaining 1 unit: Sign up for any additional elective or increase GENE 276 to 4 units.  If you take one or more electives for 2-3 units, reduce 276 to 1 unit first, followed by reducing 283 to 1-2 units to reach 10 total.  

**If you register for >10 units, extra tuition fees will apply.

Notes:  

• Given the rigorous curriculum listed, students should expect that classes and fieldwork will fill their days during regular business hours (typically 8:30-5pm). Studying or clinical preparation may extend to weekends or evenings depending on the quarter, the activity and student preferences for organizing their schedule.

• GENE 278, 279, 280, 281, 287, 288, 289 are online courses in prenatal, pediatrics, metabolic, cancer, cardiogenetics, neurogenetics, and variant interpretation. GENE 280, 287 and 288 will be taken at specific timepoints; GENE 279, 278, 281 and 289 will be taken in the same quarter as your corresponding fieldwork rotation. 
  

  • Online course pointers

    • Online courses will provide you with both foundational content knowledge about each specialty as well as clinical skills needed for your rotation.  The balance of these two components will vary from course to course.

    • The online courses have some aspects in common and some unique components around content, evaluations and format. The term “online course” is used to describe a variety of formats, ranging from video-based courses, to text-based courses, to remote, interactive courses.  In this program, online courses are video-based and self-paced, though assigned within a specific timeframe. Because we recognize that learning is best reinforced when there are multiple modes of engagement with the material, opportunities for interaction with the instructor will be described in the syllabus of each course. 

    • The content will be available throughout your training and up to six months after graduation. We recommend that you review it when you are in corresponding fieldwork rotations and again before taking the ABGC certification exam (“boards”) as you’ll likely view it with fresh eyes and a different perspective based on your exposure to related material in other courses and fieldwork rotations.  Think of this learning experience like creating a painting, the first review (taking the course during Boot Camp, before your rotation, or over the summer) gives you the outline, the second review (during a rotation or when material applies to other clinical experiences) starts to fill in some of the colors, and subsequent reviews (when studying for boards or as a GC) refine the details.

  • Additionally, in the same way that you develop specific learning strategies when taking in-person courses, we encourage you to identify learning techniques that will help you learn, organize and retain information from these courses. These can include taking notes while watching the lectures, making a list of questions that you have as you’re watching videos, creating flashcards  for facts that you want to remember, incorporating one or more of these clinical studying techniques, and taking advantage of opportunities to review or discuss information with course instructors.

    
    

Exemption Requests:

If you have taken a course focused on embryology or bioethics in the past three years (and received a grade of B or higher) and would like to request an exemption, please send a copy of the syllabus to Tacy, along with a list of other Stanford graduate course(s) that you would prefer to take instead. Your replacement course(s) should be directly relevant to your career goals.

FAQ for course registration:

1. All course registration (and registration changes) occur on axess.stanford.edu.
2. At Stanford, you will pay the same full tuition price for 11-18 units and the same reduced tuition price for 8-10 units. Therefore, you should register for exactly 18 units during each quarter of your first year and exactly 10 units during each quarter of your second year.
3. You should sign up for the majority of your courses as letter grades (note: not the default of Med/Opt). Courses that are the exception to this are: GENE 275, GENE 276, and GENE 284
4. Second years: GENE 283 provides credits for your research conducted each quarter in order to complete your required research project. While we recommend that you aim for 3 units per quarter of GENE 283 and GENE 276 during your second year, we recognize that electives may take up some of your 10 units. Please consult with your advisor if you need to move GENE 276 or GENE 283 units around so that you do not exceed 10 total units per quarter.
5. You are required to take a research elective to support your completion of the program’s research project requirements– the number of units is not important (i.e. it could be a 1 unit course or multiple 2-3 unit courses). There is “space” in the curriculum to take additional elective courses. We strongly encourage you to sign up for S/NC for any elective courses to ensure that you are able to focus on learning the material rather than earning a specific grade.