Dr. Zilkha is a board-certified pediatrician with 30 years of experience in pediatrics. She has 20 years of coaching experience and has sat on the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell admissions committee for five years. During this time, she has reviewed over 1,000 applications and interviewed hundreds of applicants. She has experience coaching applicants at every stage of their journey to becoming a physician, including high schoolers, pre-med students, and medical students.
Dr. Zilkha was valedictorian of her high school and was accepted into an eight-year BA/MD program at Washington University in St. Louis (WashU). After only three years, she graduated from WashU summa cum laude with a BA in Spanish literature and a biology minor. She was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and received the Sherman Eoff Memorial Award for excellence in Spanish. After graduation, she returned home to New York for a year, where she worked as a tri-lingual receptionist (English, Spanish, Japanese) while applying to medical school.
Dr. Zilkha already had the opportunity to attend the Washington University School of Medicine through the BA/MD program, but she decided to also apply to a few other top medical schools that were closer to home. She was accepted to the Yale School of Medicine, the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and Columbia School of Medicine, but decided to return to WashU after she was awarded two full-tuition merit scholarships (the Olin Fellowship for Women and the Distinguished Alumni Scholarship) with a stipend.
After that, Dr. Zilkha matched at her top residency choice, which was Schneider Children's Hospital (now Cohen Children's Medical Center) of the Long Island Jewish Medical Center. During residency, she won an award for her research on latex allergy in pediatric housestaff. After residency, she did part of a fellowship in allergy/immunology at Long Island Jewish Medical Center. After pregnancy complications that disrupted her fellowship, she decided to instead transition to pediatric private practice.
She spent 20 years in pediatric private practice before pivoting to pediatric telemedicine. Dr. Zilkha has worked for multiple large telemedicine companies, but her biggest accomplishment was creating and launching the pediatric telemedicine division for Allied Physicians Group in New York. Once the pandemic hit New York, Dr. Zilkha scaled Allied Pediatric Telemedicine as well as trained physicians in telemedicine across the United States. Dr. Zilkha was personally responsible for bringing pediatric telemedicine to millions of U.S. children.
Dr. Zilkha joined the staff of Hofstra University's Zucker School of Medicine (ZSOM), and then, after helping her daughter apply and get accepted to medical school, her interest in medical school admissions grew. It was then that she joined the ZSOM admissions committee.
Dr. Zilkha is extremely passionate about helping the next generation achieve their dreams of becoming medical professionals. Students who have worked with her have been accepted to prestigious medical schools, including the Yale School of Medicine, Cooper School of Medicine of Rowan University, and New York College of Osteopathic Medicine.
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