Established in 2008, the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell has consistently been recognized for its research and diversity.
The School of Medicine is built upon the strong clinical and graduate medical education programs of Northwell, as well as the robust research and academic programs of both Hofstra and Northwell’s Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research. In July, the school announced that it has been ranked among the top medical schools nationwide in research and diversity according to the U.S. News & World Report 2024 rankings. This is the ninth consecutive year the medical school has been recognized for research and the fourth year it has been ranked as one of the most diverse medical schools in the country.
“We’ve been tracking our own metrics for a long time and we have our commitment to under-represented and first generation and diverse communities so we know we’ve been doing very, very well there,” said David Battinelli, dean of Zucker Medical School and executive vice president and physician-in-chief of Northwell Health. “We were thrilled to be recognized for what we knew was going on here.”
To evaluate schools in research, U.S. News considered several measures of academic quality, including research activity, student selectivity and achievements, and faculty resources. There were four tiers in the rankings, with Tier 1 Medical Schools being the highest-performing and Tier 4 the lowest-performing. The Zucker School of Medicine was ranked in Tier 1 for research and is among 16 schools in the first tier.
“We’re known for how we introduce our students to the school, which is they all become licensed EMTs in the state of New York,” Battinelli said. “At the same time, we introduce them to the various pedagogical techniques that they learn to use medicine and then we get them off and running.”
The school was also ranked No. 52 in the nation for diversity and has consistently ranked high in this category. The rankings were based on two indicators, which are the total under-represneted minority enrollment and the ratio of a school’s under-represented minority to state or national numbers.
“The Zucker School of Medicine’s top diversity ranking highlights its ongoing commitment to creating an inclusive and diverse learning medical school environment, recruiting students from diverse backgrounds and providing a pathway through its pipeline programs for high school and college students to realize their dreams of pursuing a career in medicine and healthcare,” stated in a press release.
Battinelli said that for the first 2 1/2 months to three months, students at the school ride ambulances and learn about medicine, science and clinical care. He said that they get first-hand experience seeing how patients are moved from one facility to another. Within the first two years of attending the school, students are assisting in surgical procedures and delivering babies.
“The school is a collaborative, non-competitive atmosphere that rewards collaboration, rather than competition,” Battinelli said. “And our students do as well or better than all other medical students on licensing examinations.”
Battinelli said the Zucker school is an academic health system, as opposed to a traditional medical center. He said that the school has 2,000 residents and fellows in graduate medical education programs at Northwell, which he said is nearly 1 percent of all the people that get trained in the United States.
“So we’re just that much bigger and a more robust system than people know and it’s because we’ve grown incredibly quickly and we’ve only graduated 10 classes of students,” Battinelli said. “So for a school to be as young as we are and recognized for what we’ve accomplished by this most recent peer ranking is extraordinary.”
Visit Zucker School of Medicine for more information on the school. visit Medicine.Hofstra.edu/index.html. For the complete list of medical school rankings, visit USNews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-medical-schools.