New York City-based Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is rethinking the traditional premed pipeline with alternative admissions routes designed to bring more diverse, practice-ready physicians to the workforce.
Icahn School of Medicine aims to reduce rigid premed barriers that may deter talented candidates, according to Valerie Parkas, MD, senior associate dean for recruitment and admissions.
“Premed preparation is rigorous — and needs to be rigorous — but it does not always allow us to get talented people from different careers and different educational backgrounds,” she told Becker’s.
The school’s FlexMed program, first launched in 2013, allows undergraduate sophomores to apply for early admission to Icahn School of Medicine without needing to take the MCAT. Students are also not required to take a traditional premed course load. Instead, they may pursue an undergraduate major of their interest while still meeting various requirements around their GPA, clinical exposure and science education.
This flexibility aims to give students more time to pursue other academic interests, such as research, policy, advocacy or global health work.
“We need doctors to have different expertise,” Dr. Parkas said. “If they have a little bit more time in their undergrad, maybe we’re going to be able to foster that.”
In 2018, Icahn School of Medicine also launched a U.S. Military Institutional Partnership Program, which gives active military members a unique pathway into medical school. Candidates can receive provisional acceptance and defer enrollment until completing their military service. Similar to the FlexMed program, individuals do not need to complete traditional premed coursework or the MCAT.
While these students make up a small portion of Icahn School of Medicine’s student body, they often emerge as role models for their peers due to their discipline, leadership and real-world medical experience, Dr. Parkas said. Many go into specialties such as orthopedic or trauma surgery.
The medical school maintains a rigorous curriculum and relies on a robust advising structure to ensure students from both programs are practice-ready.
By broadening its admissions pathways, Icahn School of Medicine aims to cultivate physicians who not only meet high academic standards, but also bring diverse skills and perspectives to medicine.
“If you decrease the barrier to medicine, then you’re impacting the workforce,” Dr. Parkas said. “It takes so much time and work and rigor to become a physician. It’s hard to do anything else other than that. If you have a background in another area, then you bring that and keep that with you. The hope would be that you end up with different intersections of expertise.”
