BYU School of Medicine, Explained: Preliminary Accreditation, the July 2027 First Class, and What It Means for Provo

JoAnn Giordano Editor-in-Chief, Provo.com How we make Provo.com

Update, Oct. 19, 2026: On Oct. 14, the LCME granted BYU's School of Medicine preliminary accreditation. The MD program will start in July 2027 with a first class of 60 students, and BYU expects to open applications within weeks. This page has been rewritten from "what could happen" to "what happened and what comes next."

Provo is getting something only a handful of American cities ever get: a brand-new medical school. BYU President C. Shane Reese announced the accreditation decision at the BYU Broadcasting Building on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2026, calling it "a historic day for Brigham Young University." Dean Mark Ott had received the LCME's notice by email the evening before. The school will reshape the old Provo High School site, deepen the city's ties to Utah Valley Hospital, and put its first class of future doctors in seats in the summer of 2027.

Here is the whole story, start to finish: what was decided, what it allows, what is still unknown, and why this is one of the biggest long-term stories in the valley.

The announcement, and the why

In July 2024, the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — which owns and operates BYU — announced the university would create a School of Medicine. The stated focus set it apart from a typical new medical school from day one: a major emphasis on international health issues affecting church members and on the church's worldwide humanitarian efforts, alongside teaching and research in areas of strategic importance to the church.

Two structural decisions were made at the outset. First, the school will grant MD degrees, making it Utah's second MD program alongside the University of Utah (the state's other two medical schools — Noorda College of Osteopathic Medicine, also in Provo, and a Rocky Vista University campus in southern Utah — grant DO degrees). Second, BYU will not build its own hospital. Students will train through clinical affiliations instead — more on that below.

The dean and the team

In October 2024, BYU named Dr. Mark J. Ott the school's inaugural dean; he started that November. Ott is an accomplished surgeon who spent most of his career with Intermountain Health, with academic and affiliate appointments across Johns Hopkins, Harvard Medical School, Stanford, and the University of Utah — a résumé that conveniently spans both of the school's likely clinical worlds.

Faculty hiring is well underway, and it has produced at least one hire that med-school hopefuls will recognize: Dr. David Morton, the anatomist behind the popular "Noted Anatomist" YouTube channel, has announced he's joining BYU's new school as a department head.

Where accreditation stands (the part that decides everything)

Every MD program in the United States is accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), and a new school can't recruit a single student until the LCME says so. Here's BYU's path so far:

• July 31, 2025 — BYU submitted its application: its data collection instrument, assembled in under seven months to hit the deadline that kept a 2027 opening possible.
• Fall 2025 — The LCME reviewed the application and granted BYU candidate status, the formal step toward preliminary accreditation.
• June 2026 — The LCME conducted its survey visit to Provo. The visit was closed to the public and press — though Governor Spencer Cox visited campus the same week and posted about meeting with the school's leaders.
• Oct. 12 to 15, 2026: At its fall meeting, the LCME voted to grant BYU preliminary accreditation. BYU announced it on Oct. 14. The LCME publishes accredited programs on a separate list from candidates, so BYU moves off the applicant-and-candidate directory as its listing catches up.

Preliminary accreditation is the first of three stages. Next comes provisional accreditation, after another survey visit while the first class is enrolled, and then full accreditation, which for a new school comes around the time the first class graduates. The Deseret News put the path to full accreditation at about four years from October 2026. With a July 2027 start and a four-year MD, the first graduates would finish around 2031.

How the October decision worked

Most coverage skipped the mechanism, so here it is, drawn from the LCME's own published rules. It also explains what BYU's "yes" means.

The LCME meets three times a year — usually October, February and June — and decisions on new schools are made at those meetings by a committee of 21 voting members: 17 medical educators and practicing physicians, two public members, and two medical students. Between meetings, nothing is decided. That is why the calendar matters so much to a school whose opening date depends on the answer.

For a candidate school seeking preliminary accreditation, the LCME reviews the survey team's final report along with the school's data collection instrument, its self-study, and one document that rarely gets mentioned in news coverage: a teach-out plan. A teach-out plan is the school's answer to an uncomfortable question — if this school admits students and then fails, what happens to those students? A new medical school has to have that answer in writing before it is allowed to enroll anyone.

The four things the LCME can do

Reading the rules, the decision is not a simple yes or no. There are four outcomes:

1. Grant preliminary accreditation. The school moves to "Preliminary, Accredited" and may immediately begin reviewing and accepting applications. A provisional survey visit is then scheduled. The status takes effect on the date the LCME acts and is never applied retroactively.
2. Grant it, with strings. If the LCME notes minor issues in how the school performs against specific accreditation elements, it can grant preliminary accreditation but require written status reports addressing them.
3. Send back the teach-out plan. If the LCME finds gaps in the teach-out process, it can ask for a revised plan — to be reviewed at its next regularly scheduled meeting. For a fall decision, that next meeting is February 16–18, 2027. This is the outcome most likely to be misread publicly as a rejection. It is not one.
4. Deny preliminary accreditation. This is appealable. A program finally denied may not reapply for one year.

BYU got the first outcome. Its announcement described a grant of preliminary accreditation that lets it recruit and admit a class; whether the LCME attached any status-report requests (outcome 2) had not been made public as of Oct. 19, 2026.

Why BYU was so quiet until October

There is a concrete reason the school has said almost nothing, and it is not media strategy. Under LCME rules, a program that has not yet received preliminary accreditation must not recruit or advertise for students, solicit or collect application fees, collect applicant information, begin reviewing applications, schedule applicant interviews, or issue letters of admission.

The penalty for doing any of it is not a warning. A program that breaks this rule forfeits its eligibility entirely — it cannot apply for preliminary accreditation until its medical education program is complete and at least one class has graduated. For a school that does not yet have a single student, that is effectively fatal. It explains the careful phrasing in everything BYU published before October. Those limits ended when the LCME acted on Oct. 14; from that date the school may review and accept applications, which is why the dean could talk openly about opening them within weeks.

The clock that started on Oct. 14

Preliminary accreditation starts a five-year timer. Under rules applying to any program granted preliminary accreditation in or after 2021, the school must reach provisional accreditation within five years of the preliminary grant. Miss it and the LCME withdraws the status, and the program waits a year before it can submit a new application. BYU's October 2026 grant therefore sets a provisional deadline in late 2031.

For scale on how rare this is: as of its August 2026 update, the LCME's directory listed seven programs nationally in the applicant-or-candidate pipeline, and only three of them, BYU, Texas A&M's School of Engineering Medicine and Xavier Ochsner College of Medicine in New Orleans, had reached candidate status.

The building: West Campus and the old Provo High

The school's physical home answers a question Provo has been asking for a decade: what becomes of the old Provo High School site? BYU acquired the property and renamed it West Campus, and in May 2025 announced the medical school would be built there in a new facility.

The first class will not wait for a new building. It will start in renovated buildings of the former Provo High School, where work is underway. The permanent home, about 275,000 square feet, goes up on the same property at the corner of University Avenue and Cougar Boulevard. BYU released the first renderings on Oct. 14: Ott said the design echoes early Utah craftsmanship and Provo's religious architecture, naming the old Brigham Young Academy building (now the Provo City Library), the Provo City Center Temple and the repeating arches of the BYU Jerusalem Center, and called it "a truly special temple of learning." Ott said construction begins in 2027. University officials declined to estimate a finish date, citing Provo's planning and permitting process and supply-chain risk. Neighbors who use the property's track, field and tennis courts can keep using them through fall 2026.

The location is the strategy. West Campus sits near Intermountain Health's Utah Valley Hospital, the largest hospital in the county — which is precisely the point for a school that won't own a hospital of its own. Intermountain and BYU have discussed a clinical relationship since the announcement, and the University of Utah — home of the state's flagship medical school — publicly welcomed the new program, saying it plans to "actively pursue collaboration opportunities" in medical education and clinical care and framing BYU's internationally focused plans as complementary to the U.'s state-focused mission.

What it means for Provo

A medical school is a slow-motion economic event, and the effects will show up in layers:

The west side changes first. The Provo High site has sat in transition for years; a medical school building, plus the daily gravity of faculty, staff, and eventually students, gives the Freedom Boulevard–Utah Valley Hospital corridor a new anchor. It lands, notably, in the same few square miles as the Provo Towne Centre redevelopment — the city's western and southern edges are being redrawn at the same time.

Housing demand gets another floor under it. Sixty students a year is small at first, but medical students, residents-to-be, faculty, and staff all need places to live in a market that's already tight — the same pressure behind BYU's Wymount Terrace rebuild and the broader trends in our Provo real estate market analysis.

Healthcare gravity grows. A teaching program clustered around Utah Valley Hospital tends to pull specialists, research activity, and clinical capacity with it over time. For how the valley's healthcare system works today, see our guide to healthcare in Provo.

And BYU's profile shifts. A university known for undergraduate teaching, business, and law adds a professional school that takes decades to mature — the kind of institutional bet that changes how a campus sees itself. For everything else BYU, The BYU Guide collects our full coverage.

What to watch next

Four checkpoints, in order:

1. Applications open. The dean said "in the next couple of weeks" on Oct. 14. Requirements are already posted at medicine.byu.edu; the opening date and the AMCAS listing are the next public step.
2. Tuition. Not announced. Church News reported a reduced-cost model is one of the school's five founding elements, alongside a spiritually based mission, a focus on teaching and research, an integrated bachelor's-to-MD path and international outreach.
3. The first class arrives in July 2027 in the renovated high school buildings.
4. The permanent building breaks ground in 2027, with no finish date given.

For students already in Provo, the practical takeaway is that a pre-med at BYU or UVU now has an MD program in their own city to apply to, alongside Noorda's DO program. For how the valley's graduate and professional programs fit together, see our guide for grad students in Provo.

Facts current as of Oct. 19, 2026, from BYU's Oct. 14 announcement as reported by the Deseret News, Church News, KSL and the Daily Herald. Accreditation status can change; for the official record, see the LCME's lists of accredited programs and the BYU School of Medicine site.

Related Guides

• The BYU Honor Code, Explained for People Who Aren't Mormon
• BYU vs UVU: Which School Is Right for You? (2026)
• Provo Rec Center Drops Student Membership to $25/Month for BYU and UVU

JoAnn Giordano

Editor-in-Chief

JoAnn Giordano is the editor-in-chief of Provo.com. Having lived in and around Utah Valley for years, she leads the site's editorial direction with a focus on the comprehensive, honest local coverage that helps residents, students, and newcomers feel at home. When she's not shaping Provo.com's restaurant and neighborhood coverage, she's exploring the valley's trails and tracking down the best new spots on Center Street.

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