collageThe School of Medicine of the City University of New York (CUNY) is the fourth most diverse medical school in the country on average, and the most diverse at a primarily white university. CUNY accomplishes this accomplishment by adhering to an inclusive goal and employing a number of essential strategies.
Keep reading to see detailed information on cuny school of medicine tuition, cuny school of medicine gpa requirements, cuny school of medicine pa program acceptance rate, and cuny school of medicine class profile.
cuny school of medicine acceptance rate
around 4%
Entrance to the school is highly competitive, with an acceptance rate around 4%, rivaling the Ivy League.
cuny school of medicine
According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, 57 out of 219 enrollees in CUNY’s program — or 26 percent — identify as Black or African American. Nationwide, Black students made up only 7 percent of overall medical school enrollment in the 2018-2019 academic year. Nearly 8 percent of enrollees at CUNY’s medical school identify as Hispanic or of Spanish origin while representing 6 percent of total medical school enrollment nationally. Roughly 53 percent of students at the School of Medicine are from underrepresented groups, including more than 80 percent who are immigrants or children of immigrants.
CUNY only recently started granting medical degrees (MD), though the institution has existed for 45 years with two undergraduate degree programs. From the time the medical school was founded in 1973, “the mission of the school has always been to provide opportunities for students from backgrounds that have been historically underrepresented in medicine,” says Annabel Santana, assistant dean for diversity and educational affairs.
Data on graduation rates is not yet available, though the program has received positive anecdotal feedback from students. First-year medical student Abena Baah-Fordjour says she selected the school “because I felt at home from the first minute I stepped on campus. No other school has such a clearly defined mission that it kept reiterating and working towards.”
Students in the program obtain their bachelor’s degree and MD in seven years. Because enrollees are admitted out of high school, they do not have to take the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT). The admissions team uses a holistic review process that considers experience in past leadership roles and community volunteer work instead of relying solely on traditional test scores and grade point averages.
New York medical school admissions strategies
In this section, we’ll discuss two strategies—beyond achieving high stats and choosing all the right extracurriculars for medical school—to help maximize your admissions odds.
Strategy 1: Take a data-driven approach to decide which New York medical schools to apply to
Medical schools in New York exhibit considerable diversity with regard to matriculant stats. However, as shown in the profiles above, there are other differentiating factors between schools beyond academic metrics, such as the patient population the school focuses on or their unique program offerings. We encourage you to be extremely conscientious when making decisions about which schools to apply to.
Adding another school to your list is as easy as a couple of clicks, and we often find that many students fall into the trap of impulsively adding schools, thinking that “it can’t hurt” to try. However, your time and money are finite resources. That’s why we encourage you think two steps ahead before taking that first step. Pore through the data to be sure that the additional time and cost you incur by applying to these schools is well matched by your admissions odds. In other words, make sure your school list is filled with high-yield prospects.
Let’s follow a student whom we’ll call Esther. Esther is not a New York resident, but still wants to consider the state when producing her school list. Esther has an outstanding academic record, a 3.93 GPA and a 519 MCAT, but immediately happens upon three New York schools that showcase a first-year class that is over 85 percent in-state students. Esther doesn’t falter, however; she knows that there are still a dozen other schools in New York to research!
She then happens upon the University of Rochester Medical Center, the Weill Medical College of Cornell, and New York University, all with first-year classes composed of less than 30 percent in-state students. She now has identified three excellent target schools where she has excellent odds, demonstrating how beneficial strong research can be when building an optimal school list. So, skip schools that don’t fit your metrics and mission; more importantly, don’t let your lack of research be the reason why you left excellent medical schools off your list.
A quick disclaimer: we aren’t saying that you shouldn’t apply to a few reach schools or a few safety schools. Not all schools have to be perfect “targets”; in fact, it’s extremely important to have these schools on your list. You won’t be able to build a school list perfectly matched to your residency status, your GPA and MCAT score, and your mission and values, so take some liberties with a select number of schools. Employ sensible criteria, though, as we’ve discussed the pitfalls of the “let’s just apply and see what happens” philosophy when it comes to programs where your odds are slim.
Remember that “just applying” requires writing high-quality secondary essays. Because the application cycle is already extensive and involved, plan to focus mostly on high-yield schools that you have solid chances of getting into. In other words, the less time you dedicate to ‘impossible reach’ schools, the more time you’ll have to dedicate to crafting strong applications for schools within your target range. In such a competitive application process, the extra effort is the difference between an acceptance and a rejection.
In summary, use data to develop a school list that maximizes your chances of admission.
Strategy 2: Demonstrate fit with each New York medical school
Demonstrating fit with a particular medical school can be difficult. For starters, nearly all medical schools have missions to give back to their surrounding communities, advance medical science, and train the world’s next generation of clinician-leaders. Given this, how can we discern one school’s focus from the next?
The answer is weight! Individual New York programs—and all medical programs—weigh, or place more emphasis on, certain facets of their mission more heavily than others. In short, schools will train the full range of physicians but typically have a program geared specifically to one or two specific pillars; these pillars are highlighted on their website or have stand-alone programs dedicated to just serving that mission.
(Note: The school profiles above are written to help you quickly learn more about what each med school emphasizes; we encourage you to use them and to do your own digging through each school’s website.)
For example, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine website speaks significantly about their unique location, allowing students to earn their clinical training alongside both the underserved populations of the Bronx and the New York metropolitan area at large. Their program believes that medical education should be inherently interdisciplinary, and in their program’s description, they describe medicine as ranging from “the individual to the population; from conventional medicine to traditional practices; from the science of medicine to the art of medicine.”
In contrast, we return to NYU Grossman’s Accelerated three-year MD degree pathway. NYU’s medical education team clearly has thought deeply about physician shortages and accruing student debt; as such, they’ve designed a program specifically for students who know what specialty they already want to pursue, cutting the time most students spend in their fourth years on clinical elective rotations. Geared primarily towards students who focus on primary care training, this program demonstrates NYU’s commitment to medical education in alignment with the ongoing needs of healthcare.
To make it clear, it’s not that NYU doesn’t provide their students an interdisciplinary medical education; they enroll their students in the Practice of Medicine (POM) module where they integrate concepts learned in both the class and lab with real patient experiences. On the flip side, it’s not that the Albert Einstein College of Medicine doesn’t dedicate their time and attention to advancing medical education. They encourage their students to broaden their scopes by completing an MPH through the City College of New York, a Masters in Clinical Research Methods at Cardoza or a Masters of Bioethics at Einstein. Both schools show flashes of both interdisciplinary medical educations and attention to improving the didactic experience for students. The difference comes in the weight that each school puts on each of these pillars and, naturally, these schools will admit different proportions of students based on their fits with the schools’ priorities.
What this means practically is that when you answer the secondary prompts for each school, ensure that you can tease apart the school’s true priorities and showcase your match with their weighted missions. This demonstration of “fit” will be the difference between an acceptance and a rejection.
This strategy certainly isn’t limited to the written application or to just schools in New York. No matter where you apply, keep the “fit” philosophy in mind. During medical school interviews, make sure to communicate how your interests and the school’s mission statement are one and the same. During your multiple mini-interview (MMI), this may be more difficult given the limited time you have with each individual interviewer. Still, in the 8–10 minutes you have, make an effort to express your fascination with basic science research, your deep-rooted ties to a particular patient demographic within New York, or your desire to integrate medicine and business/bioethics/public policy. Thinking about how your values align with another program’s mission will be some of the most important time you spend in crafting your application.
Final thoughts
High out-of-state matriculant rates attract a huge number of applications, making admission to New York medical schools tough. Still, do your homework and apply a data-driven approach to see if your numbers and values match those of individual applications. Demonstrate your fit with each program in your applications, and you could end up spending four years studying medicine in New York.
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