Objectives The Faculty of Medicine of National Yang-Ming University is committed to helping students enhance intellectual, personal, and professional development while fully supporting students during this time of intense training and personal growth. The student portfolio system has sprung from the Faculty’s devotion to innovative medical education initiatives and is one attempt to fulfill our obligations to our past and future, to our society and to the rest of the world. The basic approach toward helping students enhance their cognitive, personal and professional development while coping with internal or external environmental stressors would be to identify and provide supportive elements within medical education. In order to achieve the goal, we explore possible factors, both micro and macro elements of the students’ environment, which may contribute to their stress, mental disturbances and status attainment. Methods We established a multi-dimensional and multi-functional “student portfolio” framework that integrated dynamic, timely, and continuous exploration as well as modification of students’ learning processes, mental status and environmental impact. The first step in this project was to locate and validate students’ “red flag”: factors that contributed to their stress, mental disturbances and status attainment. Self reports by the students were used for the “risk factor” analyses. Results Status achievement by students was associated with their parents’ educational attainment, in particularly the educational attainment of their mothers. This was associated with the student’s stress, mental disturbance, attitude toward life and status achievement. The educational attainment of the parents of our students increased yearly, suggesting that the social economic status and marital matching situation of individuals were associated with social environment and time. Conclusions The associations of cognitive processes, family condition, societal values, mental status and learning behaviors are intertwined dynamically with time and environment. However, longitudinal and multi-dimensional research in this area is very limited. It is important for contemporary medical education to develop a framework for the theory and practice of the development of medical students that leads to their attainment of professional, sociological, and psychological competencies. This study suggests that particular social economic status factors may increase the risk that medical students will experience stress, mental disturbances, and status attainment.