The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS or Mount Sinai), formerly the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, is a private medical school in New York City, New York, United States. The school is the academic teaching arm of the Mount Sinai Health System, which manages eight hospital campuses in the New York metropolitan area, including Mount Sinai Hospital and the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary.
Mount Sinai is ranked #11 among American medical schools by the 2023 U.S. News & World Report. In 2021, it was ranked 15th in the country for biomedical research and leads the country in research funding from the National Institutes of Health for neuroscience (#2) and genetics (#2). It attracted over $400 million in total NIH funding in 2021. Mount Sinai's faculty includes 23 elected members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and 40 members of the American Society for Clinical Investigation.
In 2018, the MD program matriculated 140 students from 6,156 applicants. The median undergraduate GPA of matriculants is 3.84, and the median Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) score is in the 95th percentile, but those admitted through the early-admissions program do not take the MCAT. The Medical Scientist Training Program is currently training over 90 MD/PhD students. As one of the most selective medical schools in the U.S., Mount Sinai received 8,276 applications for approximately 140 MD and MD/PhD positions for the 2021–2022 academic year.
History
The first official proposal to establish of a medical school at Mount Sinai was made to the hospital's trustees in January 1958. The school's philosophy was defined by Hans Popper, Horace Hodes, Alexander Gutman, Paul Klemperer, George Baehr, Gustave L. Levy, and Alfred Stern, among others. Milton Steinbach was the school's first president.
Classes at Mount Sinai School of Medicine began in 1968, and the school soon became known as one of the leading medical schools in the U.S., as the hospital gained recognition for its laboratories, advances in patient care and the discovery of diseases. The City University of New York granted Mount Sinai's degrees.
In 1999, Mount Sinai changed university affiliations from City University to New York University but did not merge its operations with the New York University School of Medicine. This affiliation change took place as part of the merger in 1998 of Mount Sinai and NYU medical centers to create the Mount Sinai–NYU Medical Center and Health System. In 2003, the partnership between the two dissolved.
In 2007, Mount Sinai Medical Center's boards of trustees approved the termination of the academic affiliation between Mount Sinai and NYU. In 2010, Mount Sinai was accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and became an independent degree-granting institution.
On November 14, 2012, it was announced that Mount Sinai School of Medicine would be renamed Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, following a US$200 million gift from New York businessman and philanthropist Carl Icahn.
In 2015, Mount Sinai announced partnerships with The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia as well as National Jewish Health, the nation's leading institutes for pediatric and pulmonary care respectively, leading to the creation of the Mount Sinai Children’s Heart Center and the Mount Sinai – National Jewish Health Respiratory Institute.
In March 2020, Elmhurst Hospital Center, the public hospital that serves as a major training site for Mount Sinai students and residents, was the epicenter of New York City's initial COVID-19 surge, with Mount Sinai house staff and faculty serving as the city's first frontline workers treating patients infected with coronavirus. Mount Sinai has since established itself at the forefront of research to understand and treat COVID-19, being named a lead site in a $470 million study to examine the long-term effects of COVID-19.