However, for those truly good students who just didn't have the direction early enough in life to pursue an American MD school, the Caribbean is really not a bad option and is actually not that risky if you perform well and are realistic about which specialties will be available to you. It's like that for a reason. my parents are both doctors in____ and they think id be good too" A small minority of them went because their whole life they've told everyone they are gonna be doctors and that feeling/pride has forced them to go to the island because they couldn't get in state side and felt embarrassed not achieving what they have been telling everyone for years. It's obvious a significant portion of students are NOT hitting them and being held back to perform. Let's start at the beginning and progress. I don't know about you but my end goal in medical school isn't JUST matching, it's matching into a program I actually at least kind of want to be at. Because they cannot get into a US MD. [4] Some schools include a list of affiliated hospitals for their clinical rotations part of the program, however, many of these hospitals are not ACGME certified, many clinical rotations that are completed at hospitals that are not ACGME certified will not be considered as completion of rotation. Of them, the average GPA and MCAT is around a 3.2-3.4 and a 24-27. One semester is four months in duration. "Scored a competitive job as a physician scribe in Minneapolis" LMAO. Except that 29% of them find residency OUTSIDE of the match (as reported by them). Applying to and attending medical school in the Caribbean is a big decision. I'm already aware. To appease their parents they'll go to any medical school they'd get into. The Caribbean is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands and the surrounding coasts. One of the Lowest Tuition Among Accredited Caribbean Medical Schools. Whether they know or don't know the risks involved typically doesn't matter because they usually don't care much themselves. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. As always, if anyone wants to add anything please let me know! As an example, my undergraduate institution was 70%+ premed. US Seniors matching had a 50% match rate INTO THEIR FIRST CHOICE. That's just how it is. For these people attending a Caribbean school is obviously the biggest mistake of their life, and the problem is that people are terrible at self-assessing if they will fall into this high risk demographic before throwing 100k and a few years of their life down the drain. Don't let the ego's of some of the mainland medical student's get to you - that's an embarrassing way to approach the world, and aside from the basic sciences (which you take in the Caribbean) you'll be taking the same STEP 1 & 2 as them, same clinical rotations in the hospitals for years 3 and 4 and the same licensing board exams. To be fair, no one wants a friend to throw their money, time, and life away. A legacy you can trust. Moreover, please be careful of what the Carib MD schools public themselves. My obgyn went to SGU also. Press J to jump to the feed. And while the costs are more than other US in-state schools, compare those costs to private medical schools and there you go. in the first sentence he goes "as a budding activist it makes sense to be a physician", but then talks about how he wants the big money and job security of a doctor. Is is a shitty arrangement, certainely. Whatever the exact numbers may be, we can all agree that 952 entering students --> average class size of 1400 in years 2-4 --> 860 residency placements is not good. Id say a large majority know they made a crappy choice going their but DO school was not an option but they are okay with being a PCP. Applicants are casting a wider net because schools are forced to turn so many students away. Discover if this path to medicine is a good option. It's dramatic and he's a pretentious douchebag but it's worth a read. So out of 952 students, on average 350 of them are taking at least 1 extra year to get through the program. Here are how IMGs are fairing getting interviews. You need sleep consolidation to learn, and on top of that you cannot take exams on medschool level sleep deprived, you'll fail out and you'll be $100,000 in debt. What is a for profit Caribbean school? A better question is why do you care so much? Reminds me of when someone in my family sobbed at Match day because she "only" matched to a mid-tier University IM program. Reddit's home for wholesome discussion related to pre-medical studies. This is a massive mistake. They are second chances for dedicated and hardworking students who are determined to put in the work to become a physician. That previous paragraph being said, you can make it happen down in the Caribbean, but if you party hard or think that it's gonna be easier than a US medical school I wouldn't recommend even trying, because the odds are against you and you'll waste so much money. So there may be a chance you won’t get accepted into a US medical school. Let them figure their own shit out. A parallel group I'd like to add, that could fall into the above ones. The medical schools of Saint Kitts and Nevis have a match rate of 45%. News & Resources; Request Info ***URGENT NEWS UPDATE*** Covid-19 Communication . Some have issues with wanting to please their parents. " "Oh woe is me, I'm a brilliant mind trapped in a lousy residency with these other loser residents". Most Caribbean medical students plan to complete residency in the States after attending a Caribbean medical school. You'll hear SGU say they have the most US residency placements for the past 7 years combined. We both have biases stacked against us, and an uphill battle. Not only that, but some of these schools are in the 30-40% range OVERALL. Someone with a Step 1 in the 250s is applying family medicine from a Carib top 4 and only received 5 interviews. There are 4 main Carib schools that people attend. Well how do they match? Now whether they can get into a US DO is uncertain-- I have seen many people, including one of my friends, who was perfectly competitive for DO opt to go to a Carib MD chasing the MD. So these are our picks for the Top 5 ‘Best Caribbean Medical Schools’ 2018 and we can say that the Caribbean offers high-quality recreation and entertainment but also a good medical education. By large most of these programs are unfilled for a reason. We lose a LOT of students down here because the requirements are lower to get into the Caribbean school, but it is just as difficult as a US med school. My doctor back in the US is from the caribbean and she did her residency at Yale. Not only are these numbers not good, they seem to be going down over the years as they increase class size and the match gets more competitive everyday. For the record, they're all incredibly good doctors. Some have better residency match rates than others so beware. Applied gen surg and didn't match? and etc. However it's also true about the residency's. Students pour in from all over the world with different motivations and ambitions. If students slip through the cracks of a U.S. medical school, then international med schools in the Caribbean may be the next choice. Ross has a match rate of 54% among US-IMGs. Please read more here. yeah reading that thing was trash. University of Medicine and Health Sciences. Society will tell you otherwise, and those who are insecure or lack self awareness buy into it hard-core. A mutual friend with MUCH better stats took a gap year because they didn’t get accepted anywhere the first round, but just got accepted to the Caribbean and leaves in a month or so. This post is meant to inform people as much as possible of what going to the Caribbean actually entails. Heavy competition for medical school programs and high tuition fees mean that many excellent potential doctors get left behind. But remember, these are the match rates of those that actually applied to the match. For example, the top ten primary care programs at U.S. medical schools cut their acceptance rates in half between 2006 and 2016. What many people seem to misunderstand about the Caribbean is that the risk of going there is largely self-mitigated and determined by your own performance. DOs have a 99% placement rate between ACGME and AOA residencies. If you screwed up in school in undergrad, take advantage of the experience and try to use it to learn that humans are not above one another. Integrity. If your study skills are still terrible (which is why a lot of people end up in the Caribbean, they either had shit study habits or had serious personal problems such as a family issue that took awhile to overcome) then enroll into a class that will help you hone the best way to study BEFORE you get here. Low living cost and low fees along with experienced and qualified teachers, make the local-based university attractive to students who want to pursue a medical profession. Look at some of the more recent posts. In case you didn't know, you can match OUTSIDE of the match at unfilled programs. Some of them are in denial, as if going to the Caribbean has better match odds than Osteopathic U.S. Schools? So of the 860 students that matched, only 610 actually found residency in the match. source, source, and source. Moreover, this post will focus on attrition rates, match rates, debt, and eventually where graduates may end up. Sometimes, Ill let you know after match. No one would take his ass if he applied as a backup. Then you have plenty of options with quality education, good infrastructure and more. Pretty much every American ever. It's BAD. But the good news is, you don’t have to be one of them. You tell me that's not better. Here is a table comparing the tuition (in U.S. $) at the Caribbean medical schools. They change their language on purpose. Here is another version of this exact write up by /u/Ryndo which is amazing. If someone is very set on becoming a doctor and understand their own capabilities it is a reasonable alternative to getting where they want to be in their careers. Yikes. To evaluate the quality of a Caribbean medical school, look into their student passage rates for USMILE step 1. An entering class at the “best” medical school in the Caribbean has an average undergraduate GPA of approximately 3.3 or 3.4. You should do a full AMA thread if youre legit. SGU has around a 50% match rate. The smaller programs outside of the Big 4 are so widely bad and have a match rate around 30%. He paints a far bleaker picture than it really is. And like I've mentioned with my friend above, there have been students here landing prestigious residencys. It was your best option at the time, and a doctor is still a doctor if you put in the work. More on this later. Many leading Caribbean Medical Schools do not require graduate degrees. It doesn't matter if you're a doctor or an electrician or a housewife raising kids, everyone has something valuable and important to contribute. 3) While dealing with a rigorous medical school schedule, you must also be able to adapt to living in a foreign environment, surrounded by a language and culture that you are probably unfamiliar with. I'm a student down in the Caribbean at the moment. My school only accepted about 3% of total applicants. -The problem is, people who don't make it weren't prepared for medical school in the beginning. ACTUAL quote from his blog: "It sucks being smart. Here's a nice little compilation I've made! Still not convinced? It is not only a good alternative, it should be the only option if you cannot get into a US MD. So if you had 950 extrapolated over 4 years you'd have 3,800 students but there's 5,200 overall students in a 4 YEAR PROGRAM. As soon as people find out where you went to school your letters lose their "wow". That quote is so hilariously entitled lmao. Group 1: Accreditation, WFME, NCFMEA, NY, CA, Title IV, 50 States. High attrition rate – many Caribbean medical schools accept a high number of students in each class (sometimes up to 1,000, which is much higher than any U.S. medical school). I wanna see this go down. They think that because they got accepted into a medical school it means that by virtue of that they must be good enough to become a physician and will be handed an MD and a residency on a silver platter as if becoming a doctor is all but guaranteed once you get accepted, which of course could not be further from the truth. A DO imo is way more prestigious than Carib MD. The average MCAT of matriculants in 2018-2019 was 511.2, and the average GPA was 3.65 and 3.80 for science and non-science, respectivel… Others feel hopeless and keep themselves willfully ignorant, using anything to justify their decision. That guy at the Million Dollar Mistake blog wasn't that smart or he would've been able to make something "better" happen for himself (I use the term "better" lightly - I don't think primary care is actually worse than or beneath the other specialties. Ok so not too bad when you consider the 952 number. If that is the case, one option is to reapply the following year. One Caribbean school graduate (whose blog post, although biased, I recommend reading if you are interested in Caribbean schools) wrote a thorough blog post about his journey of trying to match into orthopedic surgery. Also this post is about offshore medical schools in the Caribbean, not the regional medical schools that are for Caribbean people meant to practice in the Caribbean. That is such a massive discrepancy. Cookies help us deliver our Services. Most of the schools are recognized by MCI also. Not a day goes by I don’t wake up wishing I was dumb – that way at least I would deserve being demoted to primary care." Only about 50% of all medical school applicants get accepted into an US medical school. A majority of them saw it as a chance to do what theyve always wanted to do but could not achieve state side. Edit: lol okay I can settle for that link title. You could SOAP into fam med. I don't know about other schools, but SGU has a match rate of around 93%, and Ross 88%. You come up with a full itinerary for every vacation and always manage to have birthday presents for friends wrapped weeks in advance. Good luck to all that read this and still pursue it-- may you actually make it out. That's a 90% rate. If someone is extremely bright but just underperformed in undergrad for any multitude of reasons, and they understand fully what's involved, and they are happy in a primary care specialty why the fuck wouldn't you go to the Caribbean? As to your question OP - It stems from lots of sources I gather. Here's a discussion in r/medicalschool about going Caribbean. Remember, if you're in the 30-50% who don't match, you're looking at crushing debt and an inability to practice as a physician. Individuals who could get into US DO schools but care more about the two letters after their name than the risks and setbacks of being an IMG. The guy by his own admission is at an upper-mid tier university program. If truth be told, Caribbean medical schools offer quality medical education prospective students need to complete clinical rotations, get a perfect residency match , and obtain a license to practice medicine. plus, she doesn't have that failed AI robot affect that a lot of lady obgyns have, I've heard a lot more shit talking on osteopaths my entire life that I know is completely old fashioned but still so ingrained, Starting class size of 800...that's crazy man. Many Caribbean medical schools function like U.S. medical schools, which mean they have a rigorous medical curriculum to prepare their students to become successful physicians. I'll have you know SGU is the Harvard of the Caribbean good sir, I prefer to think that Harvard is the SGU of New England, Producing true Wizards of the Wards since 1976. How dare the author of this blog ranks medical schools in the Caribbean and left out The University of the West Indies, which offers an Oxbridge medical degree! Now she's finishing up a GI fellowship and a top program and getting starting offers for like 400-500k. Every building had flyers advertising the Caribbean, but not once were we ever told the risks of that route. It's widely known that a lot of what makes a Carib school really hard is they have insane checkpoints you must hit to even sit for USMLE or other benchmarks. Pre-medical students might be considering Caribbean medical schools as a way to become a U.S. doctor. I blame the lack of action by undergraduate institutions here in educating their students and preventing the propaganda from littering their hallways. I am not going to comment on the actual medical education one may receive. I was on an internal medicine rotation at a county hospital in our city, and this resident told me that he went to a "top 10" under grad program, didn't mention the name, and that he had multiple MD and DO acceptances but chose to go to the carribean because "Adventure." I believe these types of posts should be stressed, especially during this time period where a lot of applicants who lurk this sub may be receiving no love from US schools and resorting to the Caribbean. Saba has a match rate of 58% among US-IMGs. Are they legit MDs? While this is brutal, this leads to some of the most battle hardened students I have ever met. More of a gamble than a lottery. Admissions & Aid. They have a high fail rate because they have a high acceptance rate. I want to preface this with something: anyone is entitled to make an informed decision and go to the Caribbean to get their MD. In any case, the better schools will clearly let you know what’s required to gain admission, like the American University of Integrative Sciences in Barbados. r/premed (and honestly the entire premed population ranging from SDN to people still using hotmail and DSL internet) has needed a resource for many years that shows what going to a for-profit medical school in the Caribbean is really like. It's always funny to me that the ones who think they're so "smart" can't even see how their prestige chasing just exposes the fact they have a myopic and stunted perspective of the world, and that they look like idiots). 15 best Caribbean Medical Schools. He obviously doesn't learn as his arrogance continues into medical school and beyond. As it is with medical schools anywhere, some Caribbean Medical Schools are better than others. This is the group that can be most helped. I don't understand people who do carib for the letters. eh, I had no idea Caribbean schools were looked down on until lurking here. Yeah. This means qualified individuals can easily fail to gain acceptance. The average student applies to 16 schools. Many … LINK. If 952 students enter, but each class has an average size of 1300, and only 610 match with another 250sh SOAPing, that's not looking so hot. And to all of you hoping to match into Canada, it is even WORSE to get into to a residency up here than down in the states. The instilled American dream. In 2013 SGU had around a 66% match rate for US-IMGs. Read up on what a claimed 99% match rate means for Ross University. Lol yeah I read this blog. Well that's odd, it states their starting class is in Fall 2016 is 952 which includes BOTH start dates as in 2009 each class started with around 430 students with the number increasing. CARIBBEAN MEDICAL SCHOOL TUITION. There is no reason to go to caribbean medical schools anymore, that path has been closed off thanks to the US medical schools and DO programs. But a word of caution: although many graduates of the best Caribbean medical schools go on to have successful careers in the United States, it can be more difficult to do so than for their U.S.-educated counterparts. Most people apply to Caribbean medical schools as a safety option. Student Life. Although, after hearing the point of view from many Caribbean students, including one that had to live on a boat cause of a hurricane, it is my honest and objective opinion that one should always consider a osteopathic school over a Caribbean school. However, I have met some great, smart, hardworking Caribbean-grad residents who the system did benefit. The Caribbean Accreditation Authority for Education in Medicine and other Health Professions (CAAM-HP) is an accrediting body for the education programmes and schools of medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, nursing and other health professions in the 15 member nations of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). No one wants to hear they’re not cut out for it. This guy is r/iamverysmart material at its finest. Caribbean medical schools typically have higher tuition costs than US medical schools. Are you looking to study medicine in the Caribbean? The Cayman Islands have St. Matthew's medical school that has an impressive 31.8% match rate. These are the people who very quickly drop out, flunk out, or coast through with minimal scores and then don't match to a residency. This guy is still just as full of himself as he was the day he applied to med school and turned down his DO acceptance. It pretty much comes down to the same reasons why people attend DO schools. After I do that if they still decide to go... good for them. This is another blog titled "Why SGU may not be for you". He went through the fire of competition, had an amazing CV and board scores but still was unable to match. If anyone is considering the Caribbean please heed the warnings of your peers and definitely do a thorough read of this post. There are many medical schools in the Caribbean, but only a handful will allow you to practice medicine in all 50 states in the US.