You'll be surprised how much leniency there is. I'm non traditional and last took undergraduate courses at my college 8 years ago. Called them up and many said either too many years have passed, maybe someone in graduate school would be better, or they simply did not remember me. Things happen in life. You aren't going to be disqualified because you buck the trend. It turns out, I didn't even have single graduate letter as it has been 6 years since I was in graduate school as well. All my school letters came from several pre-med courses I needed to take, well after graduate school. No pre-med committee, no Major letters. But I did have a physician letter, one whom I've worked closely with the past six years. I also have a letter from my Boss. I also had letters from other important folks, some of whom are well known.
If your grades are good, your MCAT are good, you have several good letters, and you have good real world or research experience, you are guaranteed lots of interview invites. Clearly if you got all of these you are a winner and so what if things aren't the cookie cutter way they expect. Schools are looking for not just racial diversity, but other diverse opinions. For example, if you went and joined the peace corps for two years, the experience from that, the letter you get from that would be such a thing that would make you stand out from the thousands of regular college premed senior jumping straight into med school.
Anyways, NYMC has a nice suburban campus. It is in Westchester County, other than manhattan, it is the richest county in New York and top 10 in the country (depends on you categorize it). It, along with parts of long island, new jersey, and lower Connecticut are living areas for the rich folks who work in Manhattan.
Westchester Medical Center serves that the Major hospital for anyone from Lower mid Westchester and up, and also for Rockland County. People in the lower Westchester areas will either go to one of several hospitals in Yonkers or Bronx.
Anywhere close to a major city is going to be diverse, so you will see a lot of different things, but it is not in the heart of a city like SUNY Downstate.
Gross Anatomy Lab looked wonderful on the top floor of the medical education building. The building was built in 2001 I believed, so it isn't old. The apartments aren't as new though and for me they would have been too small. But again, I have lived alone for a while and have accumulated quite a bit of stuff. As others mentioned, it is Honers, High Pass, Pass, Fail so that isn't so good. BUT, I've seen in quite a bit of school, if the students "rise up" things do get changed.
I have no idea how generous they are as far as percent of class receiving scholarship, but I was one who had a scholarship. Make sure your candidacy is as good as possible and hope for the best. Here is another secret, and it was a student that told me this. Once you get accepted to more than one school, you can now pit them against each other for the opportunity to "obtain" you. So bug your financial aid people, look I really like your school, but other school is closer? or some other thing. The minute one gives you money, it becomes, I really like your school, but this school gave me X amount of money, or if it is a state school, then it is 20K cheaper. You'll be surprised how well that work. I've gotten school to give me scholarship that didn't originally do it, and I've gotten schools to increase scholarship offers based on the amount another school gives.
Kautionwirez said NYMC isn't a top 10 school, but reality is it isn't a top 90 school as the MSAR didn't publish the ranking of schools below the first 90 were ranked. BUT, like he said, they do match all over the place and there are reason for that.
1. They are still in the NYC metropolitan area so they have tons of people who came from the CITY, went to school at one of the city schools, and also have affiliated hospitals in the city. Basically, I'm sure they have a lot of connections.
2. NYMC is a "SAFE" school for a lot of people. So for example, many California students, who can't get into one of their state schools because there are too many qualified students for the few schools in California (or greater west coast) tend to look for schools else where to go to. NYMC, George Washington University usually get 12 to 14 thousand applicants as a result. Same thing applies to folks in state. If you want to be in the NYC metro area, you have 5 Awesome schools and SUNY Downstate and NYMC. If your candidacy isn't good enough for the first 5, NYMC like a great choice for you now. Therefore, many of these varied people will want to do their residency closer to home, so you see a lot going back to California, or Virginia, or Florida and so forth.
3. Don't worry so much about the ranking as they do match fairly well. But if you want to know, the ranking has a lot to do with Research and NYMC just does not have the major research capacity other schools in the area does. Just look at NIH funding and you'll see it way down in the 90s or 100s ranking. I believe it got something like 13 million from them, while Einstein for example got 167 million, Stony Brook for example got 34 million. Primary care ranking has a lot to do with percent of graduates going into primary care, and I believe a lot of these out of staters are looking to get into competitive residencies.
Like I said above, personally I have worked with a few of their doctors and they are great. It is about 30 min from NYC, longer if you are going way down in the City and traffic can double or even triple that. It is close to Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown with nice little shops and places to hang out. It is close to White Plains, a small city with Tons of things to do from shop, to clubs, to whatever.
I ended up going to another school, but I liked my experience on interview day at NYMC, I like the distance from the craziness of NYC, but yet not far from NYC. I've lived in the area most of my life so maybe I'm bias.