Ask ten pre-meds where they want to go to medical school and a few will say New York without hesitating. Then they open the list and freeze.
There’s a reason why New York has more medical schools than any other state. Some are research powerhouses in Manhattan. Others are public schools scattered across New York State, from Long Island out to Buffalo, and they train doctors for very different kinds of careers.
So “what’s the best medical school in New York” isn’t really one question. It’s four. What are your MCAT and GPA? What kind of medicine do you want to practice? How much debt can you stomach? And where are you willing to actually live for four years because that last one gets waved off in September and starts to matter a lot by March.
Below, I’ve broken the state down: the medical schools in NYC, the ones outside it, how many there actually are, what separates them, and why acceptance rates and MCAT averages steer people wrong far more often than they help.
Fifteen LCME-accredited MD programs. Add the osteopathic schools and you’re higher than that. Either way, no state has more.
The trouble is you’ll find other numbers online, and it’s not obvious which one to believe. So here’s where the disagreement actually comes from.
MD vs. DO. That fifteen is MD-only. Osteopathic schools are accredited by a different body and apply through a different service, so MD-focused lists usually skip them entirely.
Where you draw the map. Manhattan, sure. But also the Bronx, Brooklyn, Long Island, and everything upstate. When applicants say “New York medical schools” they often mean the city, and when websites say it they usually mean the state, which is how two people end up arguing past each other.
Public or private. SUNY and CUNY handle the public side. Inside the city, it’s almost all private.
Branch campuses. A few programs teach at more than one site. Whether that’s one school or two depends on who’s counting.
None of it is dishonest. One site says 15 medical universities in New York, another says 18, and both are answering slightly different questions. Just don’t take anyone’s word for it on a school you’re serious about, search it up on the LCME or AACOM directory yourself.
There’s no official ranking. There are magazine rankings, and there’s the reputation these places carry among physicians who trained here, and those overlap without being the same thing.
What I’ve put together below leans on research output, hospital affiliations, the quality of clinical training, and what students genuinely get to do. Start here. Then go verify it on the schools’ own admissions pages, because that’s where the real answers are.
NYU Grossman is in Manhattan and it’s about as research-heavy as American medical education gets. Students train inside NYU Langone, so the case volume and variety are enormous. What most people know it for, though, is money: New York University medical school covers tuition for all MD students, need or no need. Getting in is another matter. The acceptance rate is among the lowest in the country.
Columbia VP&S sits up in Washington Heights and it’s one of the oldest medical schools in Manhattan. The culture here is highly academic. Clinical training runs through New York-Presbyterian, which means real subspecialty depth. Like the other top medical schools in NY, the applicant pool here is national and brutal.
Cornell’s medical school is on the Upper East Side and shares New York-Presbyterian with Columbia. What sets it apart is the neighborhood: Memorial Sloan Kettering and the Hospital for Special Surgery are right there, and students get real exposure to both. Class sizes stay small. Admissions are very competitive.
Icahn is a Manhattan research school inside the Mount Sinai Health System, which is one of the biggest in the region. Students rotate across multiple boroughs, so the patient population is genuinely diverse rather than diverse on paper. Mount Sinai is known for genomics, immunology, and public health work, and the curriculum gives students some room to shape their clinical years.
Einstein is the medical school in the Bronx, and most clinical training happens at Montefiore. It manages to be research-strong while putting students in front of urban and community medicine constantly. If health equity or underserved primary care is what pulls you, this environment gives you a lot to work with from year one.
Rochester is worth a serious look if you want academic medicine but not New York City. The school built its reputation on the biopsychosocial model, which sounds abstract until you see how it shapes the way students are taught to interview patients. Research is solid. Strong Memorial Hospital anchors the clinical years.
Stony Brook is public and it’s on Long Island. Students train at Stony Brook University Hospital, a Level I trauma center, so the acuity is there. Being part of SUNY, tuition runs well below the private NYC schools, especially for New York residents. You get metro access without paying Manhattan rent.
Zucker partnered with Northwell Health, the largest health system in the state, and that shows up in how the program is built. First-year students do EMT training and get on ambulances early. Rotation sites range from small community hospitals to tertiary centers, all of it within reach of the city.
Jacobs is public, downtown, and connected to Kaleida Health along with other regional hospitals. For New York residents it’s one of the cheaper routes to an MD. Buffalo’s cost of living is also nothing like the city’s, and that difference compounds over four years in a way most applicants underestimate.
NYMC is private and sits in Valhalla, up in Westchester, roughly 30 miles from Manhattan. Westchester Medical Center handles most of the clinical training. The class is fairly large. Third-party sources put the New York Medical College average MCAT somewhere in the mid-510s, but check the school’s admissions page for the current New York Medical College MCAT average before you rely on it.
Five more MD programs belong on your radar:
Albany Medical College is private, with deep roots in Upstate New York. CUNY School of Medicine is public and primary-care focused, though there’s a catch: it admits through a seven-year BS/MD track, so it isn’t open to standard applicants. SUNY Downstate trains students in Brooklyn and is known for urban clinical work. SUNY Upstate Medical University anchors a large teaching hospital in Syracuse. And NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine runs a separate three-year, primary-care-focused MD program.
These are full MD programs. None of them is a safety school.
If you want to train in the city specifically, here’s the landscape:
| Medical School | Location | Type | Best Known For |
| NYU Grossman | Manhattan | Private | Research and clinical training |
| Columbia VP&S | Manhattan | Private | Academic medicine |
| Weill Cornell | Manhattan | Private | Research and clinical training |
| Icahn Mount Sinai | Manhattan | Private | Research, diverse clinical exposure |
| Albert Einstein | Bronx | Private | Clinical and community medicine |
| CUNY School of Medicine | Manhattan | Public | Primary care, community focus |
| SUNY Downstate | Brooklyn | Public | Urban clinical training |
Now the part people get wrong. Plenty of schools get labeled “NYC medical schools” without actually being in the five boroughs. Hofstra/Zucker is on Long Island. So is NYU Grossman Long Island. New York Medical College is in Westchester.
All three are in the metro area, and students do commute in. But living in Valhalla is not living in Brooklyn. If proximity to the city genuinely matters to you, look up the campus address and the rotation sites instead of assuming.
Long Island has three MD programs, and they’re less similar than the shared geography suggests.
Stony Brook is the public option, research-active, with a big university hospital behind it. Hofstra/Zucker is private and built tightly around Northwell Health. NYU Grossman Long Island compresses the degree into three years, focuses on primary care, and offers a guaranteed residency pathway inside NYU Langone.
Why do students pick Long Island medical schools? Housing costs less than Manhattan, for one. You can still get into the city for research, conferences, or family. And the health systems out here are large enough that clinical volume isn’t a problem.
Just don’t let location decide where you study medicine. Curriculum length differs and Match outcomes differ for each med school and so does the tuition. Compare all of that before you rank one above another, because “close to the city” is a weak reason to commit four years.
The medical schools in Upstate New York are Rochester, the University at Buffalo’s Jacobs School, SUNY Upstate in Syracuse, and Albany Medical College.
Stony Brook gets lumped in here sometimes. It shouldn’t be. That’s Long Island.
The pull of Upstate is mostly practical. Cost of living drops sharply once you leave the city, which shrinks the loans you take out just to eat and pay rent. Life moves slower. And each of these schools sits on top of a genuine academic medical center, so research and subspecialty exposure are both available.
One warning. Don’t read “Upstate” as “easier.” Several of these programs strongly favor in-state applicants, which changes your odds depending on where you live, but it doesn’t mean the academic bar is lower. It isn’t.
New York has DO programs alongside its MD programs. The main ones:
NYIT College of Osteopathic Medicine (NYITCOM) is in Old Westbury, on Long Island. Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine (TouroCOM) runs campuses in Harlem, right in New York City, and in Middletown further north.
Here’s something pre-meds get wrong constantly. DO schools are not a downgraded version of MD schools. DO graduates go through the same single residency accreditation system, sit for licensing exams, and practice across every specialty. The curricular difference is training in osteopathic manipulative medicine, which MD students don’t receive.
So if you’re weighing New York DO schools against MD programs, judge them on the same criteria you’d use anywhere: mission, curriculum, rotation sites, total cost, and where graduates match. Picking based on two letters is a bad way to build a school list.
Acceptance rates are probably the most misread number in this entire process, so let’s be careful. There are three reasons not to rank schools by them:
Schools calculate and report admissions data differently, so you’re often comparing numbers that were never meant to line up. Many of the most selective programs don’t publish a clean acceptance rate at all. And the overall rate tells you nothing about your own odds.
That last one is the important one. A higher acceptance rate does not mean a school is easier for you. Several public medical schools in New York report higher rates largely because they prioritize in-state applicants. Live somewhere else, and your real chances may be far worse than the published figure implies.
Look at these instead:
Don’t pick a medical school based on acceptance rate alone. It describes last year’s applicant pool. It doesn’t predict anything about you.
The competitive New York programs, especially the research-heavy Manhattan ones, attract applicants with high scores. That’s real. But averages are benchmarks, not cutoffs, and applicants forget this every cycle.
People get in below the average every year. People well above it get rejected every year. The number is one input among many.
Roughly, here’s where the top medical schools in NY sit:
| School | MCAT/GPA Consideration | Competitiveness |
| NYU Grossman | Very high | Extremely competitive |
| Columbia VP&S | Very high | Extremely competitive |
| Weill Cornell | Very high | Extremely competitive |
| Icahn Mount Sinai | Very high | Extremely competitive |
| Albert Einstein | Very high | Extremely competitive |
| Rochester | High | Highly competitive |
| Stony Brook | High | Highly competitive |
| New York Medical College | High | Highly competitive |
Pull the exact figures from each school’s admissions page or the MSAR. They move every cycle, and secondhand numbers go stale fast.
Related reading: Medical School MCAT Scores: Average MCAT by School.
Nobody can honestly name one cheapest medical school in New York without comparing tuition, mandatory fees, and living costs together. Two schools charging identical tuition can leave you with wildly different debt.
Four things drive your actual cost.
Public versus private: SUNY tuition generally comes in well below the private NYC schools.
In-state versus out-of-state: Public schools charge New York residents considerably less, and that gap is large.
Scholarships and need-based aid: This can flip everything. NYU Grossman is private and expensive on paper, then covers tuition for every MD student, which makes it one of the most affordable options in the state.
Living expenses: Multiply the rent in Manhattan against rent in Buffalo by four years before you dismiss Upstate.
The rule worth remembering: compare total cost of attendance, not advertised tuition. Every school publishes a cost of attendance figure. Take it, subtract realistic aid, multiply by four. For the national picture on what that adds up to, see our breakdown of how much medical school costs. That’s your real number.
Look at your MCAT and GPA without flinching. Then build a list with reach schools, targets, and likely admits, instead of ten famous names. If the score itself is still ahead of you, start with our complete guide to the MCAT.
Some schools want researchers. Others want primary care physicians and community doctors. Read the mission statement and ask whether your experiences actually line up. Admissions committees can tell when they don’t.
Where do students rotate? One main hospital or a dozen sites? How much hands-on patient contact do third-years really get? Which health system is behind the school? These questions matter more than rankings and almost nobody asks them.
Tuition, fees, living expenses, minus realistic aid. Do it for every school on your list, not just the ones you’re excited about.
Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Long Island, and Upstate are genuinely different lives. Commute, housing, distance from family. Four years is long enough that this matters.
If you already have a specialty in mind, find the match lists. Most schools publish them.
Rankings measure research funding and reputation surveys. They don’t measure whether you’ll be supported, taught well, or reasonably happy. Talk to current students if you can get to them.
Applying early under rolling admissions decides more than most applicants realize. See exactly what to do, and when, across the full application cycle.
| School | Area | Type | Best For |
| NYU Grossman | NYC | Private | Research and academic medicine |
| Columbia VP&S | NYC | Private | Research and academic medicine |
| Weill Cornell | NYC | Private | Research and clinical medicine |
| Icahn Mount Sinai | NYC | Private | Research, diverse clinical exposure |
| Albert Einstein | Bronx | Private | Urban and community medicine |
| Rochester | Upstate | Private | Research and academic medicine |
| Stony Brook | Long Island | Public | Research and clinical medicine |
| University at Buffalo | Upstate | Public | Academic and clinical medicine |
| New York Medical College | Westchester | Private | NYC-area clinical training |
| Hofstra/Zucker | Long Island | Private | Integrated health-system training |
There are 15 LCME-accredited MD programs, more than any other state, plus osteopathic programs at NYITCOM and TouroCOM. The total shifts depending on whether you’re counting DO schools and branch campuses.
NYU Grossman, Columbia VP&S, Weill Cornell, Icahn Mount Sinai, Albert Einstein, and Rochester show up at the top of most lists. Stony Brook, NYMC, and Hofstra/Zucker are strong programs too.
Inside the city, NYU Grossman, Columbia, Weill Cornell, and Mount Sinai are the big research names. Einstein in the Bronx and SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn offer excellent urban clinical training.
There isn’t one. NYU and Columbia top the rankings, but the best school for you comes down to your academic profile, career goals, budget, and where you actually want to train.
Yes. NYITCOM is in Old Westbury on Long Island, and TouroCOM has campuses in Harlem and Middletown. Both award the DO degree and lead into US residency.
None of them are easy. A few public schools report higher acceptance rates, but that usually reflects in-state preference rather than a lower academic bar.
Public SUNY schools generally cost New York residents the least. NYU Grossman is the odd exception among private schools, since tuition is covered. Compare total cost of attendance after aid.
Three: Stony Brook’s Renaissance School of Medicine, the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, and NYU Grossman Long Island.
New York gives you a range, from research-intensive medical schools in Manhattan to public programs and community-focused schools spread across the state. That’s an advantage, but only if you use it. The highest-ranked school isn’t automatically the right school. What decides it is whether your academic profile, your interests, your finances, and the training environment actually fit together.
So Build a balanced list. Reach schools, realistic targets, and programs where you’re a genuine fit. Getting the application timeline right matters just as much, since rolling admissions rewards early submission. That’s what gets people into medical school. Follow IMG Helping Hands for more content like this. Our purpose is to guide you through every step of your journey from pre-med school era till you match into your dream residency program
IMG Helping Hands guides students and international graduates across the whole journey, from pre-med through residency. Book a free call to map yours.
Articles published by IMG Helping Hands are prepared by our team using information from direct experience, publicly available resources, and educational references. AI tools may be used to assist with drafting, proofreading, and formatting; however, all content undergoes review and approval before publication.
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