Mount Sinai vs Cornell

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Agassed

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Having trouble figuring out which program to rank higher. Here are my impressions:

Sinai:
Great training with solid transplant and cardiac experience, well developed simulation curriculum
Awesome PD and relatively young and energetic faculty
Incredible moonlighting opportunities
Better work hours/call schedule compared to Cornell
Residents seem very content
The department is well respected by hospital admin and other departments
Cons - travel to elmhurst for trauma, national name recognition not as prominent as Cornell?

Cornell:
Great training at NYPH plus amazing training at Sloan Kettering and HSS which are world class places in their own right - incredible regional at HSS
Bigger name than Sinai
Great housing
Residents admit to working hard but seem happy
New PD is a former resident and transition appears to be beneficial for the program
Cons - less transplant than Sinai, workhorse program with longer hours and at home call

These are just a few brief impressions. If anyone could add some of their impressions or if any current residents could chime in, that would be really helpful.
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why exactly is bigger name an important factor unless you want to go into academics? i guess this changes the topic entirely


Agassed said:
Having trouble figuring out which program to rank higher. Here are my impressions:

Sinai:
Great training with solid transplant and cardiac experience, well developed simulation curriculum
Awesome PD and relatively young and energetic faculty
Incredible moonlighting opportunities
Better work hours/call schedule compared to Cornell
Residents seem very content
The department is well respected by hospital admin and other departments
Cons - travel to elmhurst for trauma, national name recognition not as prominent as Cornell?

Cornell:
Great training at NYPH plus amazing training at Sloan Kettering and HSS which are world class places in their own right - incredible regional at HSS
Bigger name than Sinai
Great housing
Residents admit to working hard but seem happy
New PD is a former resident and transition appears to be beneficial for the program
Cons - less transplant than Sinai, workhorse program with longer hours and at home call

These are just a few brief impressions. If anyone could add some of their impressions or if any current residents could chime in, that would be really helpful.
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What did you think of Cornell's Peds experience? I can't find it online but do you know the fellowship placement for both?
 
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Cornell just matched two people for Peds fellowships. One to CHOP and one to Boston Children's.

And to the OP, why is at home call a Con? Wouldn't you rather sleep in your own bed than in the hospital?
 
How's the reputation of Sinai outside of northeast? especially for getting PP jobs. I have an interview at sinai in 2 weeks and I'm debating if I should go or cancel. Right now I'll probably put it at #7 below cornell and columbia, just because I feel like cornell and columbia have better national recognition especially If I'm looking to get a job out west.
 
Your pros/cons seems way off. As a resident at one of those institutions I can say that the most accurate is the housing. Otherwise, none of the other pro/cons is accurate. Choose another profession if you don't want to be dissapointed.
 
Airzonk said:
Your pros/cons seems way off. As a resident at one of those institutions I can say that the most accurate is the housing. Otherwise, none of the other pro/cons is accurate. Choose another profession if you don't want to be dissapointed.
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Guy is a troll. Ignore him.
 
Airzonk said:
Your pros/cons seems way off. As a resident at one of those institutions I can say that the most accurate is the housing. Otherwise, none of the other pro/cons is accurate. Choose another profession if you don't want to be dissapointed.
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What's your take on moonlighting at Sinai though? Seemed like a pretty good deal on the interview day.
 
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If going by what he said in a separate thread...

Airzonk said:
Sorry, but I should respond to the posters questions regarding hours. I was a surgical resident before anesthesia and I can tell you my hours are worse I just don't report them as so. On cardiac I wake up 4:30am and arrive by 5:15 to set up my room in NYC our hospital does not employ techs qualified to set up the 4 line transducer set, zero them properly have an adequate TEE in the room or the basic "cardiac set up". I am a nurse in every regard. I make the drugs. Check the maching. enable the TEE machine and enter the patient data. I set up the basic intubation equipment, make sure no cables are touching the floor etc.., etc.., On peds make all the Baer tralls for like 7 to 8 cases all the drugs etc.,,. Did more endo in my first years than a CRNA in an endoscopy center. Set up everything no "techs" there. I wont refer to them as techs anymore other than people that show up and do not much. What else general OR's 8am start 630am didactics up at 530 am, miss didactics because the techs are not helpful. Get reprimanded for miss important 630am conference??? while i set up because surgeon wants block in by 0700. I could go on but anesthesia sucks and puts on a huge front in so many ways in this regard. BTW surgeons will always win. Have fun with anesthesia residency. Disclaimer does not apply to attendings who went through this and don't care anymore and will not change the culture.
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Cornell does not have daily 6:30 AM didactics.
 
A bunch in this post doesn't jibe with Cornell...No 630 didactics. OR start at 730. Endo mostly covered by CRNAs. Perfusionists setup your pressure bags in cardiac (and the cardiac tec kicks *****)...

Though to be fair I did make a bunch of buretrols. I finished there last year, doubt much has changed. I know things are still crazy busy with bellevue offline, though.
 
I am a current Sinai student going into anesthesiology. Almost ever single applicant from here wants to rank Sinai #1 (and if they aren't it is more for personal geographic reasons). I really love the program and hope to stay.

To give you an idea I interviewed at other top places (MGH, Brigham, BID, Columbia, Cornell)

Sinai is absolutely the most competitive (I mean difficult to get) anesthesia residency in the city. Unless you knew for a fact that you wanted to do regional/pain fellowship AND also knew for a fact that you had to stay in Manhattan for it, Sinai is overall a better choice. I think Sinai has excellent regional BTW, but HSS is just a beast for regional fellowship and it is always easier to stay at home institution. Sinai does extremely well for fellowships so it would not be an issue either way.

I'll just briefly address some of the things you said.

"solid transplant"
-We are one of the busiest liver transplant centers in the country. We do every solid organ transplant. Also one of the busiest small bowel transplant centers.

"and cardiac experience"
-Very highly ranked in CT surg (I wanna say top 10 but might be like 11, either way we have a integrated CT surgical fellowship which = huge volume of CT surgery)

"well developed simulation curriculum"
-I would more say one of the best in the country. Adam Levine literally travels around and teaches other residencies how to use simulation.

Awesome PD and relatively young and energetic faculty
-Yes, hands down best PD I met.

Incredible moonlighting opportunities
-Yes, ability to make over 100k if you pick up extra shifts

Better work hours/call schedule compared to Cornell
-Yes

Residents seem very content
-This is a huge understatement. Probably the happiest residents I've ever seen/heard of. Probably due to the above reasons.

The department is well respected by hospital admin and other departments
-Our chair just became president of the entire hospital.

Cons - travel to elmhurst for trauma
-this is not a Con. Elmhurst is like 20 minutes away. There is a shuttle service. It is a great hospital. Food is amazing. It is only for 2 months out of the whole residency.

national name recognition not as prominent as Cornell?
-Maybe for undergrad, for medicine not so much. (Mount Sinai has no undergrad). Remember that all of the people you are applying for jobs from are within the medicine/anesthesia world. They will know what Mt Sinai is.
 
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deepfreeze said:
national name recognition not as prominent as Cornell?
-Maybe for undergrad, for medicine not so much. (Mount Sinai has no undergrad). Remember that all of the people you are applying for jobs from are within the medicine/anesthesia world. They will know what Mt Sinai is.
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I am from California and while I had heard of Mt Sinai, I never knew whether it was a good program or not. While I know better now, my point is that the name of Mt Sinai does not come close to carrying the name recognition Columbia or Cornell does across the nation. (talking about Manhattan programs only).
 
codeb1ue said:
I am from California and while I had heard of Mt Sinai, I never knew whether it was a good program or not. While I know better now, my point is that the name of Mt Sinai does not come close to carrying the name recognition Columbia or Cornell does across the nation. (talking about Manhattan programs only).
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Yeah I think that was my dilemma in deciding among Columbia/Cornell/Sinai. I wanna practice in west coast eventually and feel like the name recognition of columbia and cornell will carry more weight, even though I heard nothing but great things about sinai. If I wanna stay in NY, I'll probably rank sinai ahead of cornell/columbia.
 
The only time I could see the name recognition being a factor would be if you wanted to go into community practice somewhere far away from NYC. Even then, I doubt this community practice far away from NY will be flooded with columbia/cornell applications. If you want to do community practice you should do residency near where you want to be hired anyways.

For academic medical centers it will make no difference. Sinai something like #16 medical school. Hospital ranked very highly in many specialties (as high as #2 in some). All of the academic centers know all of the other academic centers.

BTW I completely agree that the students across the country might not know Sinai as well. Just like I have no idea how to rank the Cali residencies. However, if I were a fellowship director or private practice hiring I would know how to rank them. You can bet the good ones around the country do also.

Anyways, all three programs are great and different in their own way. I'm sure you will succeed no matter which one you end up at. Just giving my opinion. Good luck with the match!
 
afteranesthesia said:
Bumping... Any other opinions? Really struggling with how to rank these. Loved both a lot!
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Yea I agree with the above posters. I'm from the California and I think as undergrads we tend to know of only the uc system as far as schools. I didn't apply to Sinai for medical school because I didn't know about it. But as I progress through my training I hear about Sinai everywhere. It is listed on the us news honor roll along with other top names. The training is excellent. Residents are happy. Get to live in New York in Manhattan without feeling dirt poor. Mt Sinai is a top institution clearly. Lay people would not recognize the name but they also don't recognize the name of mayo, Cleveland clinic, Brigham, mass gen either. However, anesthesia groups are by no means lay people. They are in the know. They went through residency training themselves. They applied to these same institutions when they were in our shoes too. I might move back to cali after residency as well, but would have no hesitation ranking Sinai highly. Biggest things for me is the cold! Which has nothing to do with the program. But for Sinai I would handle the cold!
 
One more bump. Are there any Cornell or Mt. Sinai residents out there who can comment on your program? Trying to make sure my rank list stays final the way it is. I guess everyone is getting nervous with their choices.
 
I'm actually curious if any Cornell residents had any input as well. There was a recent scut work review that went up this week that wasn't too flattering. Wondering if any residents can comment about their experience with the program.
 
It doesn't correlate AT ALL with what I experienced. Would love others feedback. Wondering if the scutwork post was a troll attempt to keep people from ranking Cornell higher.
 
I wouldn't place too much emphasis on Scutwork...anyone can post there (it really would be better if they verified that the person writing the review has a .edu address from the program) and all it takes is one opinionated person to write a scathing review. It's definitely not a "cush" program - but I still had a good impression when I interviewed.
 
Intern at Cornell who will give my impressions of the program.

First, I wouldn't pay attention to scut work much at all. With any of these forums/sites you are going to hear from the people who dislike things alot more than people who are happy at any of these programs. It's the way it works with most reviews of anything online (restaurants, tech products, etc). People who are happy with something more often than not don't post a bunch of stuff anonymously online talking about it but you are more likely to hear from people who hate things and especially when it comes to stuff like this.

In regards to Cornell, I'm very happy to be here. Yeah intern year can be hard but that scut work review is completely off base with how we are treated. The surgery residents are all very nice to us, we will be working with them for the next 3-4 years so it is to everyone's advantage to get along. Certain surgery services you may work harder than others but if you are organized and and stay on top of your patient list, it's easy to get things done. I feel like the department fully stands by us as interns even as we are on different rotations. The surgery services need us to help cover their services so it is in their best interest to treat us well. I've had no issues with other surgery interns or upper level residents and frequently go out for drinks with them. Plus you only do 3.5months of surgery and some services only have 1-2 patients at a time. I personally would rather do surgery months over medicine wards and I know most of my fellow interns prefer surgery here over medicine here. The other rotations intern year aren't bad at all and you do learn things.

I obviously can't comment too much on the OR aspect of the anesthesia department as I don't have as much experience there as the upper levels do but I have done 3 months of anesthesia this year and I loved it. All of the attendings I worked with were very helpful, nice, and willing to teach. Now maybe that is because I was only an intern but I wasn't complaining and that's how I feel it should be. There are alot of younger attendings who are very chill and fun to work with. The new program director is a great guy who recently graduated from the program. The administration seems to be increasingly responsive to resident issues and are actively working on certain things (such as getting the following days' assignments out much earlier now). The first friday of every month there is a happy hour for all of the anesthesia residents at a different bar in the area. Alot of times there are attendings that come out and have some drinks with us as well.

In summary I think if you asked most of the residents here they would say they are happy with the program and the direction it is heading. There are going to be people at any and every program who are unhappy and in my opinion those people are likely to be more vocal about their experience than other people. Anyway I feel like the program can get a bad rap on these forums and online which is ultimately unfair to everyone and I think based on past experiences from years ago but I believe the program is completely different than it used to be. Finally, I wouldn't base your final decision on ranking programs on what people have to say online whether it's good or bad. It comes down to how you feel you would get along at that program and how you felt on interview day and any other interactions you had with residents/hospital/program.
 
cooltime7 said:
Intern at Cornell who will give my impressions of the program.

First, I wouldn't pay attention to scut work much at all. With any of these forums/sites you are going to hear from the people who dislike things alot more than people who are happy at any of these programs. It's the way it works with most reviews of anything online (restaurants, tech products, etc). People who are happy with something more often than not don't post a bunch of stuff anonymously online talking about it but you are more likely to hear from people who hate things and especially when it comes to stuff like this.

In regards to Cornell, I'm very happy to be here. Yeah intern year can be hard but that scut work review is completely off base with how we are treated. The surgery residents are all very nice to us, we will be working with them for the next 3-4 years so it is to everyone's advantage to get along. Certain surgery services you may work harder than others but if you are organized and and stay on top of your patient list, it's easy to get things done. I feel like the department fully stands by us as interns even as we are on different rotations. The surgery services need us to help cover their services so it is in their best interest to treat us well. I've had no issues with other surgery interns or upper level residents and frequently go out for drinks with them. Plus you only do 3.5months of surgery and some services only have 1-2 patients at a time. I personally would rather do surgery months over medicine wards and I know most of my fellow interns prefer surgery here over medicine here. The other rotations intern year aren't bad at all and you do learn things.

I obviously can't comment too much on the OR aspect of the anesthesia department as I don't have as much experience there as the upper levels do but I have done 3 months of anesthesia this year and I loved it. All of the attendings I worked with were very helpful, nice, and willing to teach. Now maybe that is because I was only an intern but I wasn't complaining and that's how I feel it should be. There are alot of younger attendings who are very chill and fun to work with. The new program director is a great guy who recently graduated from the program. The administration seems to be increasingly responsive to resident issues and are actively working on certain things (such as getting the following days' assignments out much earlier now). The first friday of every month there is a happy hour for all of the anesthesia residents at a different bar in the area. Alot of times there are attendings that come out and have some drinks with us as well.

In summary I think if you asked most of the residents here they would say they are happy with the program and the direction it is heading. There are going to be people at any and every program who are unhappy and in my opinion those people are likely to be more vocal about their experience than other people. Anyway I feel like the program can get a bad rap on these forums and online which is ultimately unfair to everyone and I think based on past experiences from years ago but I believe the program is completely different than it used to be. Finally, I wouldn't base your final decision on ranking programs on what people have to say online whether it's good or bad. It comes down to how you feel you would get along at that program and how you felt on interview day and any other interactions you had with residents/hospital/program.
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Does it concern you though, that the didactics are so light (essentially 1 day every month)? I have heard the ITE scores have become an issue of late, and with the increase in work hours due to hospital closings in NYC...won't this jeopardize getting fellowships after residency (given that Peds, Cards, and possibly Pain are going to the match, scores/objective criteria become much more important)?
 
It doesn't concern me too much because I would rather be in the OR than sitting in a lecture personally. If you are someone that needs a structured didactics every day in order to properly study and learn things then maybe this program isn't the right one for you. Whether you have lecture every day or once a month you still have to do the majority of your learning in the OR and reading on your own.

I'm not sure what the increase in work hours has to do with anything but once NYU is back up and fully operational (which is should be shortly) the amount of cases and patients will/should decrease at the other hospitals in the area and the work hours also decrease. I can't say what will happen with fellowships and how they will be evaluated now.
 
I'm confused about Cornell - there are only didactics once a month? That can't possibly be right...I thought someone mentioned there were lectures in the morning.
 
Didactics are basically once/month for each class for about 3-4 hrs that day. Every week there is a case conference on Thurs pm that all the residents go to to discuss interesting cases/management. There are also weekly lectures for subspecialties such as peds/cardiac that happen in the morning and anyone can go but only those people on the rotation are expected to go to. As an intern when you do anesthesia for your 3 months you get a lecture or two every day in the afternoon.
 
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