New York Medical College (NYMC or New York Med) is a private medical school in Valhalla, New York. Founded in 1860, it is a member of the Touro University System.
NYMC offers advanced degrees through its three schools: the School of Medicine (SOM), the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBMS) and the School of Health Sciences and Practice (SHSP). Total enrollment is 1,660 students (including 774 medical students) in addition to 800 residents and clinical fellows. NYMC employs 1,350 full-time faculty members and 1,450 part-time and voluntary faculty. The university has more than 12,000 alumni active in medical practice, healthcare administration, public health, teaching and research.
Part of the Touro University System since 2011, New York Medical College is located on a shared suburban 600-acre campus with its academic medical center, Westchester Medical Center (WMC) and the Maria Fareri Children's Hospital. Many of NYMC's faculty provide patient care, teach, and conduct research at WMC. New York Medical College's university hospital, Metropolitan Hospital Center, in the Upper East side neighborhood of Yorkville and East Harlem in Manhattan, has been affiliated with NYMC since it was founded in 1875, representing the oldest partnership between a hospital and a private medical school in the United States. Metropolitan is part of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC), the largest municipal hospital and healthcare system in the country.
With a network of 20+ affiliated hospitals in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and West Virginia, NYMC's hospital affiliations include large urban medical centers, small suburban clinics, rural medical centers and high-tech regional tertiary care facilities, where medical students and residents are afforded a wide variety of clinical training opportunities.
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History
New York Medical College owes its founding in 1860 to a group of civic leaders who believed that medical studies should be practiced with a better understanding of what the patient needs. This group of civic leaders was led by the noted poet William Cullen Bryant, who was an editor of the New York Evening Post. Bryant was concerned about the condition of hospitals and medical education in New York City. His main concern was with some of the medical practices being used to treat disease, which at the time included bleedings, purges, and the administration of strong drugs in too large doses.
Interest in the medical field rapidly grew over the next few years due to the United States Civil War, which generated a major need for health related occupations. As a result, the college was founded and opened as the Homeopathic Medical College of the State of New York on the corner of 20th Street and Third Avenue, near Union Square in Manhattan. In the first semester there were 59 students and 8 professors. The college adopted the name New York Homeopathic Medical College in 1869 and, in 1887, New York Homeopathic Medical College and Hospital.
The sister institution known as the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women was founded a few years later in 1863 by Clemence Lozier. In 1867, it graduated Emily Stowe, the first female physician to practice in Canada. Three years later in 1870, Susan McKinney Steward graduated as the first African-American female physician in New York State. One of its later graduates, Adelaide Wallerstein in the class of 1905, also held a law degree, and founded the East Side Clinic for Children in 1906. When the Women's College closed in 1918, its students transferred to New York Medical College.
In 1875, Metropolitan Hospital Center opened as a municipal facility on Ward's Island, staffed largely by the faculty of New York Medical College. As a university hospital of New York Medical College, this relationship is among the nation's oldest continuing affiliations between a private medical school and a public hospital.
Built by New York Medical College in 1889, the Flower Free Surgical Hospital, was the first teaching hospital in the United States to be owned by a medical college. It was constructed at York Avenue and 63rd Street with funds given largely by Congressman Roswell P. Flower, later governor of New York. In 1908 the college changed its name to New York Homeopathic Medical College and Flower Hospital. In 1928 the college was the first medical school in the nation to establish a minority scholarship program. By 1935, the college had transferred its outpatient activities to the Fifth Avenue Hospital at Fifth Avenue and 106th Street. The college (including Flower Hospital) and Fifth Avenue Hospital merged in 1938 and became New York Medical College, Flower and Fifth Avenue Hospitals.
Schools
Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBMS)
The college's involvement in graduate education dates back to 1910 when its records show the existence of advanced courses and research programs. Graduate courses in surgery and medicine were offered in the 1920s. In 1938, the college's charter was amended to include the authority to offer graduate degrees. In 1963, the Graduate School of Medical Sciences was officially founded, establishing for the first time a center for graduate education separate from the medical curriculum. The school was renamed the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in 2022.
The GSBMS prepares future researchers, teachers, senior-level scientists and technicians to work in academia and industry. It is in the Basic Sciences Building along with facilities of the School of Medicine. The graduate school has approximately 150 enrolled students and 90 faculty members. It offers doctor of philosophy, Master of Science, and a M.D./Ph.D. dual degree program for current and prospective medical students.
School of Health Sciences and Practice (SHSP)
The School of Health Sciences and Practice began in 1981 as the Graduate School of Health Sciences, located at Vosburgh Pavilion near the School of Medicine and Westchester Medical Center. Student enrollment is approximately 500 with 221 faculty members (150 full-time).
The SHSP offers accredited programs in public health (MPH, DrPH), speech language pathology (MS), and doctor of physical therapy (DPT). Doctoral students may pursue a dual degree (M.D./MPH) or joint degree (DPT/MPH) at significantly reduced cost.
School of Medicine (SOM)
Founded in 1860, the School of Medicine at New York Medical College is one of the oldest in the nation. It is the largest of the three graduate schools, awarding approximately 190 Doctor of Medicine degrees per year. Students have the opportunity to earn dual degrees such as M.D./M.P.H., M.D./M.S. or M.D./Ph.D. in the School of Health Sciences and Practice or Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
The School of Medicine has 774 actively enrolled students (31% in-state) along with 2,944 faculty members serving in 6 basic science and 20 clinical departments. Grading is Honors/High Pass/Pass/Fail. On-campus housing is provided for most preclinical students in furnished, unfurnished, single or married configurations.
The medical school has adopted the multiple mini interview system as well as the CASPer test, both developed by McMaster University Medical School to select students for admissions.
The class entering in 2025 had an average 3.77 GPA and an average 516 MCAT score. 21% of students self-reported as members of groups underrepresented in medicine.
In 2009, the passing rate for the USMLE Step 1 exam was between 99 and 100%, above the national average. As of 2007, 13,270 physicians had graduated from the School of Medicine with 97% of them board-certified. Approximately 917 graduates had served on an American medical school faculty, including 18 department chairs.
Rankings
For 2024, U.S. News & World Report ranked the college tied for #101 for Research and #112-123 for Primary Care out of 193 medical schools.
Affiliated hospitals and organizations
Located on campus, Westchester Medical Center is the main academic medical center of New York Medical College School of Medicine. It is ranked among the top five hospitals in New York State for bariatric surgery, and one of 25 hospitals in the nation to receive the American Heart Association's 2008 Triple Performance Award. Westchester Medical Center has the highest case mix index of all hospitals in the United States.
A significant portion of the medical school class relocates to New York City for clinical rotations, for which the primary site is Metropolitan Hospital Center in Manhattan. Housing is provided for rotations that are further from the main campus, such as those in Connecticut, New Jersey or Staten Island.
New York Medical College affiliated hospitals and health care organizations for graduate and undergraduate medical education:
Westchester and upstate New York
Westchester Medical Center (University Hospital)
Maria Fareri Children's Hospital (University Hospital)
Phelps Memorial Hospital Center, Sleepy Hollow
Keller Army Community Hospital, West Point
Saint Joseph's Medical Center, Yonkers
VA Hudson Valley Health Care System, Montrose
New York City
Metropolitan Hospital Center (University Hospital) (Manhattan)
Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center (Brooklyn)
Calvary Hospital (Bronx, Brooklyn)
Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, (Queens)
Lenox Hill Hospital (Manhattan)
Richmond University Medical Center (Staten Island)
Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center (Manhattan)
Wyckoff Heights Medical Center (Brooklyn)
Connecticut
Greenwich Hospital
Norwalk Hospital
St. Vincent's Medical Center (Bridgeport)
New Jersey
Hoboken University Medical Center, Hoboken
St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center, Paterson
Saint Michael's Medical Center, Newark
St Clares at Denville/St Mary's at Passaic
West Virginia
Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Beckley
Ambulatory Care Programs
Center for Comprehensive Health Practice
Westchester Institute for Human Development
Open Door Family Medical Centers
Matriculation and residency match
Medical students are selected from colleges and universities across the country and the first-year class typically arrives with an average composite MCAT score of 516 (92nd Percentile) and an average GPA of 3.75.
Notable alumni
William Harkness – astronomer who discovered an important coronal emission line, United States Navy Rear Admiral and director of the United States Naval Observatory
Cornelia Chase Brant qualified here in 1903 and rose to lead the college.
Mary A. Brinkman – homeopathic physician
Michael J. Bronson – co-director of Joint Replacement Services at the Mount Sinai Medical Center
M. Belle Brown – one of the few women in medicine of her time who practiced surgery
Harry J. Buncke – pioneering plastic surgeon, considered "The Father of Microsurgery." Past president of the American Association of Plastic Surgery, the American Society for Surgery of the Hand, and the International Society of Reconstructive Microsurgery. Former professor of surgery at Stanford University and the University of California San Francisco.
Camille A. Clare – obstetrician and gynecologist, Chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at SUNY Downstate Medical Center.
Mary E. Green – president, American Household Economic Association
Clarence Sumner Janifer – physician, public health official, World War I medical officer, and First African American member of the New Jersey State Medical Society.
Helen Singer Kaplan – pioneer in the field of sex therapy and founder of the Human Sexuality Program at the Payne Whitney Clinic
Joel Kupersmith – former dean of the Texas Tech University School of Medicine, and head of the Office of Research and Development of the Department of Veterans Affairs
Notable faculty
Mary A. Brinkman - instructor in diseases of children
Flemming Gomme Graae – Chief of Child Psychiatry
Joseph T. English – former chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and Sidney E. Frank Distinguished Professor
William V. Silverberg – Professor of psychiatry, co-founder of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry