This is to all prospective students who are curious about the university. I attended the HMI program for the 1st of 4 year program in Sept. 2007 after i finished my undergraduate degree and there are a lot of things which you should be aware of the HMI isn't telling you. I'll start out by saying that if you have any other option, you should try that first because this school isn't very legit. I should've known this when they lost half my application materials even though i sent them all in one envelope. Ok so here goes. I went to Selesia for orientation week and multiple reasons told me to go home. First of all, not a single person there believes in the school itself, every single person there doesn't have any faith in the program what so ever and are only continuing it because they already put time and money into it and the credits wont transfer. Right when you get there you start to get curious since it seems that most of the student body is failing courses and there are plenty of people who admit to paying professors for grades. This is horrible on so many levels and it effects everyone considering their fake A after three failures would be better than your B since they don't keep class rank! Second on the orientation tour, the leader of the tour blatantly told us which rooms you can cheat in and which you cannot cheat in (in front of the visiting parents). Your grade is not also all academically based since professor can grade you lower or higher if they like you or if you dress the wrong or right way. The main thing that HMI does tell you is that 100% of their people who pass the USMLE step 1 get a clinical rotations. This sounds impressive but means nothing since this is automatically given everywhere. The thing they don't tell you is that their passing rate is horrible because their program isn't focused on learning the materials to passing the USMLE like every program in the US or Caribbean. The previous year to me had 2 people out of 42 pass on their first time and even HMI will admit that if you don't pass on your first time, you will probably never get a US residency therefore never be able to practice in the US. You will see them doubt their own programs because they recommend you take the 6000 dollar prep course for the USMLE1 two times before you even take the test. Ok now to the even sketchier part. I went their thinking that I could do my clinical rotations in NY, chicago, or ohio like they say. The truth is they lied. When I went there, I found out that both the chicago and ohio clinics cancelled the program because they didn't want to be associated with the school and its curriculum. This was a major concern of mine since I am definitely no rich and I dont want to spend 2 year of tuition and then find out that the NY one closed also and I cant do clinicals in the US and therefore not practice. So a few of us brought it up with the orientation leader. Guess what, he literally said "I'm not allowed to talk about that" and turned away! Then the next day he made this speech saying the clinicals were closing down since they HMI wasn't filling the yearly reserved seats. This might sound like a legit excuse but it simply means nothing because it just shows that not enough people are passing and these hospitals are not going allows HMI to send random sized groups every year and waste seats. So simply, Yes the programs did shut down. (HMI does this a lot, they don't blatantly lie but avoid the question or answer a different question to try and cover up the original.) At this point, I was made up since not a single person said the program was worth it and they all said they regret going to HMI. Also the school is the most unorganized thing I have ever seen. I've seen day cares that are better organized. If you don't believe me, go to the so called "mandatory" orientation and see how everything is unorganized and every event starts like 2 hours late. (Turns out that most people don't even go to the orientation and its doesn't hurt anything.) Also, the only time any from HMI was available is when I told them I was leaving and wanted a refund. Funny thing is 4 wanted to leave that day also and they said we had to Dr "Shame" as we started to call him. Turns out this was a way to try to convince us to stay and he kept trying to talk us into but he avoided every question I brought up. Instead he did as HMI always does, and answers random other questions and makes it sound like he is giving you a good answer but in-fact not answering a single question. One of the mothers who took her son out asked why so many kids were failing because a high percentage like that couldn't be from students, it had to be from bad teaching. Dr. "Shame" replied that it was because students weren't studying and he was like "look this room we are is for studying and no one is in here reading." I replied by saying "The room was locked and you just unlocked it with your key, so how do you expect people to study here?" He then told me that you could find him to open it even though this was the first time I had even seen him in the week I was there. He also had no clue about a refund policy even though he supposedly worked for HMI for so long. The funny thing was he told me that he also has a Ph.D. in psychology and that I had mental issues for wanting to leave but he didn't want to go into a session with me. This was funny because the reason we call him SHAME is because it is common knowledge that he isn't even a M.D. He is in-fact a person who put Dr in front of his name even though he hasn't even finished his medical school. During the meeting he also tried to bring up that if I go back to the states and go to school, i wouldn't be able to practice anywhere else in the world like i would through HMI. The funny thing is you can by participating in Doctors without borders and he had no idea what the program was. What kind of doctor has never heard of doctors without borders? (Plus even though this was to just prove a point, i also shadowed in Shanghai at Ren Ji Hospital for 2 months and plenty of surgeons would visit from the US and they would lecture and be invited to preform surgeries (but i didn't want to bring this up since it would be something he would think I was lying about))
So as you can tell, i left the school even though I did make a lot of friends there which i still keep in-touch with.

So this was my experience and as you can see I didn't leave for any small reason. As a whole the institution isn't what anyone would expect of any school let alone a medical school. Seriously look at the website itself and see if it looks like something that would represent a legit medical school.

If you don't believe me, good luck but things you should know:

1. Make sure to buy your books in the US. James Womack told me that it was optional because there are book stores on campus. Turns out not. But don't buy your books unless you know what to get because apparently the book list they give you at orientation is about 5 years out of date. The list was made by professors who no longer teach so only about half the books on the list are still needed and half that are needed are not on the list. (A lot of people were really not happy about this since they brought all their books) So make sure you check with a 2nd of 6 or 2nd of 4 on which books you need. Most people are selling their books anyways so you could just buy their used books.

2. The seat allocation fee is fake. Medical school isn't cheap but this fee is fake. Don't pay it. Its as simple as this, not paying this fee doesn't affect anything at first. Obviously if you actually do want to graduate from this place, pay it later on but at first don't pay a single cent because it wont hurt anything. This will make it so that if you do end up seeing that my above statements are true. They wont keep 3000 dollars for no reason. Plenty of people their don't pay this money and only people who are there know that it wont affect your admission. DONT PAY UNLESS YOU ARE SURE YOU ARE STAYING IN THE PROGRAM.