If you know now for absolute certain you want Dermatology/Ortho/Radiology/Plastics/ENT or a residency at a very prestigious school such as Harvard or Hopkins, keep applying to a US school until you get in- you have a very poor chance of getting these as a Carib doc.

If you are certain you don't want any of those and will take a residency anywhere, go ahead and get started Caribbean. It's one year less you have before you can get on with your life. You can get almost anywhere you want with a Caribbean degree, provided you work hard enough. This is coming from someone that got a residency in a moderately competitive specialty (Emergency Medicine) and wishes they had started a Caribbean school two years earlier as opposed to waiting around and hoping. My 2c worth.

try at US school first and exhaust that option first no question about it. what i and mang before have done is to actually start at auc in tne may semester while still applying to the US schools. then if you get in to a US med school for august you have wasted less time and have already started a semester of important classes so your time at the US school will be easier and if you don;t get in you are ahead.

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OBGYN PGY II
I see light at the end of the tunnel!!!...wait a minute its just another freakin tunnel!

I agree. Definitely try for the U.S. school, but if something happens and you try to get in and you don't then waiting all of that time you have just wasted a year of your life "trying" to get into medical school when you could have just gone to AUC and be a year ahead in the whole process. Go to AUC and keep applying to schools in the U.S. Maybe you wait for the summer to go to AUC or maybe you start in Jan. Either way you should do something to get ahead. Better to take action than to sit back and let admissions people decide your fate.

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http://www.lifeloveandmedicine.com

"The art of medicine is in amusing a patient while nature affects the cure." - Voltaire

Definitely retake the MCAT, even take a prep course. I myself should have done that but did not. Most people I knew who took an prep course raised their score quite a bit, maybe not a full 9 points but a fair bit.
Oh yeah, living in St. Maarten is not fun at all, its insanely expensive and its gets annoying to be around the same people day in and day out, very different from the US where most medical schools are in big cities.
Even Dental and Podiatry school is sounding really good now. My ex roommate in college went to Pod school, he is working in some small town now but he did not want to go overseas.

eh.. thats acedmic dishonesty.. I called up a whole bunch of Schools in the US and asked them that same thing.. They said you can not apply to first years class if you are enrolled in any medical school, whether it being a US or foreign. You would have apply as an advance standing student which is a different pool of applicant and a whole other beast. On top of which if you try lieing and get caught you will be black listed. I know from a direct source at a med school here in the states that once one committee finds out a lie has taken place they than contact other schools where you applied ( which can be seen on your AAMCAS application) and notify them of the sitituation.. So be careful

you will have to withdraw from AUC before you can apply again to US programs and if you complete a minimum of one semester you need to apply as an advance standing student. I would really take the MCAT again.

Also weigh in the option of the extra year of preparation for a US medical school. If you feel you did super-well, then go for the US medical school. Good luck.

I want to emphasize a point this poster made. I know people who have been rejected with ~3.5 gpas and 30-32 mcats. At the same time , i know people with 3.3s and a 28 that got into allo last year. Same race and similar application. Sad but true. Take the gamble for the US school though because US school>>>>Carrib Schoool

If it were me, I would defer your acceptance to the May semester. It will cost you $500, but in the grand scheme of things...not that much money. Then re-take the MCAT and see how you do. If you get the 30-32 that you're expecting, then definitely apply to the US. If you can get into the US, that's where you want to be! If you don't improve that much (going from a 23 to 32 is quite a feat, unless you didn't study at all the first time), then you'll still be set at AUC.

Whether you start in January or May will not make much of a difference. It is possible for January students to make the match with the previous semester's august students, but not easy and you'd have to take everything with no breaks. So, if you go in May instead, you'll have much more time to deal with clinicals and likely, be in the same match. And then, at least you'll know that you didn't just give up on US schools. Good luck!

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AUC 4th Semester

Very sad that this even needs to be mentioned! What an unfortunate system it can be.

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AUC 4th Semester