I've been accepted to St James & interviewed @ AUC

Even if (& it's a big if) I get accepted to AUC, St James is cheaper & it lets me take the same USMLE as every other school. Can I depend on my future possibly-decent USMLE to carry me even though St James has got a bad (bad) repuation?

What sort of USMLE would I need to have a decent shot @ a competitive residency (lets say radiology for argument's sake) from AUC?

Would a residency in something like rads/derm be plausible from St James? (I know this isn't the St James forum... )

There is a big difference between AUC and St. James. If you get into any of the big 3 schools, you should not even consider the others. You're already at a disadvantage coming from the caribbean, it's even worse if you're coming from one of the lower caribbean schools. I would not depend on any USMLE score to carry you through with St. James. They definitely don't have California approval, which includes other states that use CA's list. Further, their rotations are likely not all greenbook (though I could be wrong), meaning that there are even more states that you wouldn't be eligible to practice on. I can't see every going to a school that would only let you practice in certain parts of the US, even if I didn't want to practice in the other spots.

Rads/derm is almost impossible from AUC. I wouldn't even think about it from St. James.

__________________
AUC 4th Semester

Saba is cheaper than AUC and it does have CA approval. If you got an interview @ AUC, Saba is not out of reach, have you tried applying there?

I'm not sure I completely agree with this. Radiology is competative, but not ultra competative. If an AUC student get over a 230 on step 1, and you have a good audition elective, strong lORs, etc, you'll have a fairly decent shot.

It would be interesting to determine the number of rads placements over the past couple of years. If I had to guess, I would suppose it is under 10 per year from all carib schools. The carib schools churn out something like 2000-2500 per year so those are not good odds. It would be interesting to hear from someone who knows the stats. The mean Step I score for AMGs who placed in rads in 2006 was 235. The number will be higher for USMIGs......

that's a lot of if's.

__________________
AUC 4th Semester

Apart from the obvious track record the big three have in residency placements..considering a school w/o Federal loans could be risky

You get what you pay for.

__________________
Bookite, MD, DC
AUC SOM

Emergency Medicine Resident
PGY1 UTCOM

Exactly. We're already here because most of us didn't get into a single school in the US and the caribbean already has a bad enough stigma attached to it. Why would you want to go down yet another step to a school that doesn't even have federal loans or approval of all the states? Just because they allow you to take the USMLE does not mean that you'll be equally prepared or able to practice anywhere you want. Don't take short cuts now that could hurt you later.

__________________
AUC 4th Semester

Listen, I know everyone will say that chances are slim and they based this on the numbers, but you have to remember to look at the number of people that actually want to do rads.

In a given year, there could be 10-20 or so people per class who could go into radiology based on their step 1 scores, but if only 2 are interested, then you will see a small number of placements.