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"A Top Medical School Revamps Requirements to Lure English Majors"

  • NPR All Things Considered
  • (May 27, 2015)

You can't tell by looking which students at Mount Sinai's Icahn School of Medicine in New York City were traditional pre-meds as undergraduates and which weren't. And that's exactly the point. Most of the class majored in biology or chemistry, crammed for the medical college admission test and got flawless grades and scores. But a growing percentage came through a humanities-oriented program at Mount Sinai known as HuMed. As undergraduates, they majored in things like English or history or medieval studies. And though they got good grades, too, they didn't take the MCAT, because Mount Sinai guaranteed them admission after their sophomore year of college. Adding students who are steeped in more than just science to the medical school mix is a serious strategy at Mount Sinai. David Muller, MD, is Mount Sinai's dean for medical education. One wall of his office is a massive whiteboard covered with to-do tasks and memorable quotations. One quote reads: "Science is the foundation of an excellent medical education, but a well-rounded humanist is best suited to make the most of that education." Learn more.