CUNY will establish free-standing medical school without MCAT requirement

November 19, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN AND HARLEM — The City University of New York is launching a free-standing medical school with the goal of expanding students’ access to medical careers, particularly in under-served communities and by circumventing the MCAT exam, according to an announcement from Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday. The transformation will move the 50-year-old school, currently a constituent school of The City College of New York, to being under the auspices of the CUNY Graduate Center, thus elevating the school to a graduate-level institution, adding master’s, doctoral and post-graduate residency programs, and aligning it with medical schools across the country. The transition will also enable the medical school to bolster its impact, simplify accreditation and advance its dual mandate to produce diverse medical practitioners and provide quality health services to underserved communities across New York City where more than half of residents identify as Black or Latino, but 16% of both communities are physicians.

CUNY Medicine’s existing holistic admissions process, having no MCAT pre-requisite, will continue to widen the scope of opportunities available for prospective students. When Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez delivers his annual state of the University Address on Wednesday at New York City College of Technology in Downtown Brooklyn, he will be giving more details on the plan.

Prestigious medical schools that don’t have the MCAT score prerequisite include Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Northwestern University’s The Feinberg School of Medicine and Yeshiva University, among others.

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