The overall mission of the UCI Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) is to educate individuals who can understand and contribute to advances in research, and who can also apply those advances to the field of healthcare. The program has been set up to support students throughout the relatively long time commitment required to earn both the M.D. and the Ph.D. degrees. The program organization reflects an attitude of flexibility both in academic content and the path the student takes in gaining the knowledge requisite for the two degrees.

Students in the Medical Scientist Training Program can pursue their Ph.D. studies in any graduate program at the university. These include interdepartmental programs, such as the graduate program in Cellular & Molecular Biosciences (including six departments in the School of Medicine and the School of Biological Sciences), the Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program (including six departments in the School of Medicine and the School of Biological Sciences), the Medicinal Chemistry & Pharmacology program (including four departments in three schools), and the Biomedical Engineering graduate program, as well as individual departmental graduate programs throughout the campus. Students may carry out their research in one of the collaborative facilities on campus that combine both basic and clinical research, such as the Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Clinic, the Research Imaging Center, the NCI Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Institute for Clinical and Translational Science. This flexibility in choice of intellectual pursuit reflects the trend in medical science toward demanding both greater specialization and, at the same time, the seemingly paradoxical blurring of boundaries among scientific disciplines.

As advances in medicine today can come from a wide range of research fields, the combination of a medical degree with advanced training in any of these basic fields offers real promise for graduates possessing a richly diverse knowledge base linked with the ability to apply that knowledge in clinical medicine. Since each area of study has different requirements, the program also gives students a significant degree of latitude in how they go about acquiring their training. Most students choose to begin their studies with the two basic science years of medical school, but some choose to begin with graduate courses and research and others have integrated medical school courses and research throughout their graduate career. In all cases, however, the Medical Scientist Training Program steers candidates toward a schedule that maximizes the likelihood that they will complete both degrees.