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Originally Posted by WantMD
From what I have read and heard, obtaining a good residency depends a whole lot more on your USMLE scores than anything else. Even I you go to a US school and screw up the USMLE's you will not get into a competitive residency.
As you have probably already read, St. Georges, AUC & Ross are considered the "Top Three" schools. Myself, I am probably headed towards SABA which is also a good choice. According to SABA, t99% of their grads got residencies in 2003. The top three probably have similar or better stats.
I don't think the problem is obtaining a residency, as this can easily be achieved by decent USMLE scores. I think the real issue you must address is where you want to get licenced. Licensure is much more difficult and not all schools are equal in this respect nor does it depend on your USMLE scores. The "Top Three" are accepted in all 50 states, but some are more tricky than others: Texas, Kansas...
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The general rule you'll find is that if you go to school outside the US, you'll need to do better on the USMLE for any given res spot, with increasing difficulty getting into increasingly difficult specialties; i.e., if you plan on FP, IM, or psych, really not much to worry about, general surgery a little more difficult but doable, but ortho or rads oncology, chances drop to almost 0 (keeping in mind that chances from a US school aren't all that much better).
Licensure is really only an issue with a small subset of schools (generally the lesser known and newer Carib ones plus a few others), and with Texas and California, the most anal states. While higher USMLE is still expected (all else being equal) for Western schools recognized in their home countries (e.g., UK-recognized UK schools, Aussie schools, Israeli schools, etc.), licensure won't be an issue (e.g., Texas takes docs from all of them).
St. Georges, AUC & Ross are probably better qualified as the "Top Three" Carib+Phillipines+Mexico schools (the traditionally so-called '2nd chance schools'), but certainly they do have the *largest* sample of grads successfully returning to the US of all international schools.
-pitman