The Icahn School of Medicine

Pioneering Education in the 21st Century
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) provides extraordinary education in a translational context.

Our diverse student body shares one thing in common – a desire for radical discovery, change, and progress in biomedical science and improved patient outcomes and health care delivery. Our school is not for those who seek comfort in static tradition. Our students and trainees are ready to challenge and be challenged, to fully participate in our educational, research, and clinical communities.

Preparing this next generation of doctors and scientists for a new era of digital health and genomic medicine requires thinking differently about how we recruit and train our students.

We are recruiting multi-talented students from richly diverse backgrounds and pioneering new approaches in our curricula that instill entrepreneurism, foster critical thinking and provide unparalleled educational opportunities to translate scientific discovery into practice and improve public health. Rather than working in silos, graduate students and medical students collaborate on research projects, working in laboratories located in the same building as our patient clinics.

The Inside Track
The Icahn School of Medicine is integrated into the Mount Sinai Health System, a network of seven New York City hospitals supported by our centers of excellence, research institutes and laboratories, strategic partnerships, faculty and affiliated practices.

Based in this active health care nexus, rather than an isolated academic setting, we are the cornerstone for an incredible wide range of varied training and research opportunities. Our students benefit from top-notch academics and real-world experience, pursuing science in service of society.

Our faculty is fully accessible, with open lines of communication throughout the School. We embrace the collaborative process, school wide, nationally, and globally.

Our structure enables us to be nimble. The School of Medicine is fully integrated with the workings of the Mount Sinai Health System. Our immersion in East and Central Harlem helps us to apply science in the service of society. Our emphasis is on teaching clinicians to think like scientists, and scientists to think about the patients they are working to cure.

We are recruiting and training mathematicians, computer scientists, engineers, venture capitalists, leaders in human rights, social justice and global health, and they are changing the landscape. They are challenging the ways the world looks at science, clinical care, and how we help those in greatest need.

We are committed to helping the local community, satisfying our goals of research, service, and education as we weave all three into every aspect of our work. We view our students as partners. We encourage you to launch grass roots movements and establish key programs. Medical students envisioned and founded the East Harlem Health Outreach Partnership (EHHOP), a student-run, free clinic for the underserved. Graduate students created Mentoring in Neuroscience Discovery at Sinai (MINDS), an initiative to promote neuroscience education and build enthusiasm among local students in kindergarten through high school. These are just two examples of our creativity and drive.

New York City
The Icahn School of Medicine is located in one of the world’s most intellectually and culturally stimulating cities. Shared with The Mount Sinai Hospital, our four-block campus borders the neighborhoods of largely underserved East Harlem and affluent Yorkville. The Mount Sinai Health System spans all five boroughs and surrounding areas, serving an incredibly diverse patient population. New York City is also home to many other health care facilities and pharmaceutical and medical companies, placing you front and center in the health care industry.

Innovative Learning
For half a century, our forward-thinking philosophy has earned us a reputation for integrity, discovery, altruism, and clinical excellence. We help students develop the knowledge, attitude, and support they need to become the next generation’s agents of change in medicine and biomedical science.

In keeping with these values, we have designed a number of groundbreaking programs for you to choose from, including FlexMed, which allows college sophomores in any major to apply for early acceptance to our MD program and also FlexGrad which enables college undergraduates in any major to apply for early acceptance into our PhD and MD/PhD programs upon completion of our Summer Undergraduate Research Program. We also have dual degree tracks and a variety of experiential programs, including our partnership with Google Life Sciences, which offers MD and MD/PhD students an unparalleled opportunity to participate in research programs at GLS’s laboratory facilities in Silicon Valley as full-time members of the research team.

We have a number of academic partnerships with other hospitals, medical facilities, and academic institutions. We offer a dual MPH/MSW program with Fordham University and a Bioethics program with Union College. Some of our partners in research include New York Academy of Medicine, Baylor Research Institute, and Brookhaven National Laboratory. We investigate computational and engineering applications for medicine with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and with the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, we are exploring nanotechnology, biomarkers, and other exciting areas.

Our curriculum includes built in flex time, which is protected time that you can devote to self-directed, individualized learning and discovery, patient-centered experiential learning, community participation, or other essentials for future practitioners and thought leaders. Though our program has a rigorous didactic component, you have many custom choices, and we encourage you to forge your own path. We have strategies and processes that foster flexibility and collaboration instead of competition and rigidity.