Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine Establishes Institutional Partnership With U.S. Navy, Streamlining Pathway for Servicemembers
Application cycle underway on August 1; applicants must be on active duty
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) has established a streamlined pathway for active duty service members in the United States Navy and Marine Corps to apply to medical school prior to completing their service commitment.
The program allows provisional acceptance unencumbered by the traditional science requirements and MCAT. To be considered for admission, applicants must be on active duty with the Department of the Navy, which includes the Marines, and hold a bachelor’s degree recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Candidates admitted into the ISMMS/Department of Navy program are offered provisional acceptance to ISMMS and then may defer their acceptance to continue their military service.
“Military veterans bring maturity, intellect, discipline, resourcefulness, and problem-solving skills that we value tremendously at the Icahn School of Medicine, where a variety of voices is critical to medical education and to the health of our patients,” says David Muller, MD, Dean for Medical Education and Marietta and Charles C. Morchand Chair in Medical Education.
According to Dr. Muller, the Navy pathway provides a mechanism for recruiting servicemen and women while integrating a layer of flexibility to ease the transition from their undergraduate careers. The partnership is a product of the Icahn School of Medicine’s popular FlexMed program, which allows college sophomores to apply for early assurance of acceptance.
1st Lt Chris Bellaire will be the first student to matriculate at the Icahn School of Medicine through the Navy pathway. As an officer transitioning from active duty in the Marine Corps, Lieutenant Bellaire says he feels that medicine is a natural progression of a career spent in service to others. While stationed in Hawaii, Lieutenant Bellaire explored his interest in medicine by volunteering at a local hospital. Later, in 2017, while deployed in Southeast Asia, he saw first-hand the health care consequences of poverty, disease, and conflict. “My commitment to medicine and global health really took off after that experience,” he says. The Icahn School of Medicine’s emphasis on cultivating young doctors with different backgrounds and different voices appealed to him. “When I first read about the Institutional Partnership program, I thought, wow, Mount Sinai has a very inclusive idea of what it means to be a med school student. And I really gravitated to that.”
More information about the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, is available online.
About the Mount Sinai Health System
Mount Sinai Health System is one of the nation’s leading integrated academic health systems and one of the largest in the New York metropolitan area. Its comprehensive system includes seven hospitals, more than 400 outpatient practices, over 600 research and clinical laboratories, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and the Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing. Together, the Health System comprises approximately 48,000 employees, more than 9,000 physicians, and 8,600 nurses.
As a leading learning health system, Mount Sinai combines clinical expertise with scientific discovery to improve patient care while training the next generation of health care and biomedical leaders. The Health System provides care across every stage of life, from prenatal care through geriatrics, while advancing personalized medicine through artificial intelligence, data science, and biomedical research.
Mount Sinai is consistently recognized among the nation’s leading academic health systems for patient care, research, and education. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 1 in New York by Newsweek and No. 5 on the magazine’s World’s Best Hospitals list. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai ranks No. 11 among U.S. medical schools and No. 1 among freestanding medical schools for National Institutes of Health funding, reflecting the strength of its scientific enterprise and leadership in biomedical research.