Although considered "malignant" by some in the past, Mt. Sinai's ENT program is anything but since the new chairman, Dr. Genden, took over (officially in July 2005, though he was interim chairman before that).
I am fairly certain that the program now accepts 4 residents per year. You can read about the descriptions of the rotations by year on the department's website. I assume you are more interested in aspects of the program not presented on the web.
The residents there are a great bunch with whom to work. They get along well and there is a strong sense of teamwork all around. Though I did not work with all of the faculty members when I rotated there, the ones with whom I did work were fantastic, with some being very well-known in the field. The chairman is extremely accessible and very pro-resident and has taken measures to drastically improve the quality of resident education, which, from what I understand, was not a major focus under the previous chairman.
I only rotated at the Mt. Sinai hospital, not at Elmhurst or any of the other sites as which residents rotate. Thus, I cannot give you any opinion of what those places are like. However, I will mention that the service at Sinai is a very busy one and sees lots of great and interesting cases. The department shares its own set of about 5 OR suites with urology and these OR's are located in an area separate from the main OR's. They are close to the residents' room as well as the surgical floor where post-ops staying overnight will go. There are cases just about every day, as well as clinic on most days. There is a large amount of head and neck surgery, as this is one of the chairman's specialties, including microvascular reconstruction and free-flaps. Most areas in the field are well-represented, though I am not sure how this has changed since I rotated there (since I think the department was looking to increase the size of the faculty even more). Calls are in-house in the oto 2, 3, and 4 years and home-call during the last year.
Although I am not a resident at this program, I did rotate there as an MS4. Just want to let you know that my goal in this post is far from trying to sell you on this program. It is simply to let you know that it is a worthwhile program to consider, and I know that when I was deciding where to apply and interview that this type of information can be very useful. Good luck to you all.
