Lets be real...how many are actually making it to clinicals and residency??

[passion_of_medicine]

I would really hope to hear from some med 4, med 5 semester students as well as graduates of MUA...

Please, with all honesty, how many students are actually passing and making it through to clinicals and residency?

I hear some good/bad things about MUA in terms of preparing its students.


Any experienced input would be highly appreciated!

[hapshey_usa]

Check out this page.

Medical University Of The Americas - www.mua.edu (http://mua.edu/alumn.php)

[passion_of_medicine]

you did not answer my question....
on their website, they list 2 or 3 alumni per year....I want to know how many students after two years actually leave the island to start clinicals?

[SPODAT]

Roughly 50% of any beginning class completes basic science and is ready for the USMLE within 18 months. This accounts for many forms of attrition (illness, transfer, failure of basic sciences, failure of shelf exam at end of med5, splitting semesters up... as in dropping back a class or 2). Emphasize Roughly, it's close enough, and let's not start a useless debate.

Probably 75% of those pass the USMLE on first attempt, then they begin clinicals within a month or 2 after, unless they are trying to get very specific rotations, then it takes much longer.

Also, you really need to be a little more careful with your math. There are 60 new residents in class of 2009. That's a bit more than 2 or 3.

IF you do the math, considering an average starting class was 80 +/-5, 2 years ago, it works out.

Personally: I've passed step 1, 2, cs, and am in early 4th year, in match, recieving residency interviews. So, it's going pretty well.

Basic answer is anyone who wants to try hard and is reasonably intelligent and doesn't suffer a brain aneurysm, or run out of money, will make it, all the way through.

Hope this answers your questions.

[wAyRadikull]

2 or 3 per year? You have got to be kidding me. Go on the website and look again. Its ATLEAST 60 people per class, all of them are in good to great residencies. Speaking of which, residency is no easy task to obtain. The only time we had 2 or 3 are in the first couple of years that MUA opened up in 1998.

But as for real numbers, it's a bit on the complicated side. Many students choose to split semesters therefore falling back a semester or two, some people transfer due to various reasons (loans, higher quality of living, failure etc), some students who started out w/ me bailed out within the first few weeks of school because it wasn't for them or home sickness got to them. Some people failed out and went about there way. So there are a lot of different variables and different circumstances which makes attrition rate of students kind of tricky in a Caribbean setting.

I can't give you exact numbers because I don't know. I wasn't here four years ago to testify to actual people attending MUA all the way to residency. Give me a shout in 2012 and I'll let you know. Haha.

As to how many kids start clinicals? My class has about 70 kids who have made it to Med 5 thus far. Given the fact that all these 70 kids pass the comp and step 1 exam, ALL 70 will be going into clinicals.

I'm a current Med 5 and I have cruised through without splitting or having any setbacks (Thank God). Key is to work hard, do your time and get off the island. If you stick with that mentality, you WILL get off the island in a timely fashion. The only time the above will be not true is if you get side tracked with socializing on campus too much, not paying attention in classes, pushing off studying until right before the exam etc etc.

Other than that, the ball is in your court. Make it happen. MUA gives you all the essential information that you need to learn, it's up to you to learn it.

Good luck to you.

[wAyRadikull]

Damn, looks like I took too long to reply. Spodat nailed it on the money. Represent haha.

[passion_of_medicine]

This is exactly what I was informed about an actual first hand MUA student who just started clinicals.



"you have to complete a comprehensive (on every subject from MED1-5) Basic Science shelf exam from the National Board of Medical Examiners with a grade that is equivalent to 185 on the USMLE Step 1.
the logic behind this is that 185 is a passing grade for Step 1* and our administration wants to increase our first-time pass-rate to upwards of 90%. this criteria is important for state-side and international accreditation. in order to prove we are a medical school with an education equivalent to our counterparts in North America and graduates worthy to work across the USA and around the world, we have to meet certain standards.
The first-time pass rate for foreign medical students is 67%. i don’t know MUA’s current status, but i figure it’s pretty close and is definitely well below students in the USA for several reasons that are beyond the scope of this post — including the caliber of students that come to Caribbean med schools, the fact that we write Step 1 before clinical rotations instead of after (like most North American Canadian schools), whether or not English is your first language, and the general quality of curriculum scope and education.
the current first-time pass rate for American medical schools is upwards of 93%.
if we can’t produce numbers similar to the USA, why would MUA expect their students to be treated the same as American medical school grads? alternatively, if our pass rate is similar to North American schools, why shouldn’t we be able to be licensed to work anywhere in the USA or Canada? why shouldn’t our diploma be looked upon as just as valuable if we can prove we learned the same amount of material in a shorter amount of time?
to get an idea of where MUA is currently at, let’s quickly look at the class that completed their Basic Sciences (finished 5 semesters of classes on island) in August 2008…
approximately 40+ students wrote the “exit exam” and only half passed. the penalty for failing is that you have to return to the island in three months and re-take the exam. in the interest of exam hygiene (keeping it clean and honest), MUA does not yet (and may never) offer state-side retakes.
the re-takers recently returned to Nevis and rewrote in the middle of the November. results came in this week: only 3 more students passed. 18 failed for a second time.
in a “three strikes you’re out” kinda way, the re-re-takers have one last chance to pass the final exam. if they fail again, they will be dismissed from MUA and their only option to continue a career in medicine will be to transfer to another school.
is this a good thing or a bad thing?
for the 18 students that have to re-re-take the exam, it’s obviously very stressful financially (flying back and forth) and academically (all that studying with no end in sight) and emotionally (what on earth am i doing with my life??). i feel bad for them and empathize with their frustration. people end up in Caribbean medical schools for a variety of reasons, and i don’t doubt that troubles with traditional academic settings is one of them. plus, if you have any sort of debilitating test anxiety, you’re sort of screwed if you want to become a doctor.
i know academic standards have shifted a bit even in the time i have been at MUA with more stringent pass requirements, less curving, and more shelf exams for each semester. MUA has recently moved to instating NBME shelf exams as the sole final exam worth 25% of your class grade. which essentially means you have to learn the material to the level of the North American Medical Board of Examiners before you are able to move on to the next semester. this probably means that my class (and all of the classes behind us) are better prepared for the comprehensive final and Step 1. it probably means the classes before us weren’t as well-prepared for the exit exam because they didn’t take nearly as many semester shelf exams and are paying for it by having to do even more work now. which sucks.
but from MUA’s point of view, they are improving the caliber of the school by “weeding out”** graduates that may or may not pass Step 1. so far, every August 2008 student that passed the comprehensive shelf has passed Step 1. there are always stories here and there of people who got Cs in every class, did poorly on the exit exam and totally rocked Step 1, but in general this supports the administration’s theory that the comprehensive final is a good gauge of how prepared you are to write Step 1.
and the most efficient way to improve your school’s first-time pass rate is to prevent people you think are going to fail from taking Step 1.
as a future MUA grad that is going to take the name of this school on my diploma and into every hospital and emergency room and doctor’s office that i go to once i leave Nevis, i am thankful for a school administration that is interested in improving the caliber of our graduates. i don’t deny this whole exit exam thing is scary as hell, but working my butt off to get off this island and move forward will be well worth it. i look forward to meeting fellow MUA students again on rounds and being proud of how well we will be able to answer questions from residents and attendings. i am excited to show up our American counterparts and improve the name and negative stigma of Caribbean medical schools within North America. we are smart! we will make amazing doctors someday! just wait and see."






Does anyone else have this experience?

[doc2be1day]

One thing to remember when looking at the graduates of a class is that it represents 3 semesters of basic science graduates. In the past two years the average seems for be 50-70 basic science grads per semester. So that would be about 180 per year. If you say there are about 60 in the final graduating class for any one year, that would represent an attrition rate of 66%. That wouldn't include all those who dropped out between Med-1 and Med-5. I didn't do a count and am basing the 66% on what others have posted here.I agree that the first time pass rate at MUA has risen quite a bit, but that's because so many less people are being allowed to take the Step 1.

[SPODAT]

Putting the numbers game aside, because there's too many confounding factors to be able to be concrete...the actual point...what are you going to do? It's a far more important question than "what have others done". True, there is a need to evaluate if a school can get you past the boards and into residency, but MUA has proven this already.

There are clearly many students who are more gifted, less gifted, advancing not advancing, not always a linear relationship. If you want to make it, you can at MUA. And they are making it better by making it harder.

I would venture to say it may be harder to matriculate into the 3rd year at MUA than at most U.S. schools, because I'm not sure many of them have required exams to be able to pass from year 2 into year 3?, or shelf exams being 25% of finals?

This is not a cop-out on facts, it's just my take on what I think actually matters more than statisctics.

[aconfusedazn]

IIRC pass rate for the USMLE Step 1 is now 90%

[SPODAT]

What does IIRC Mean?

If that is MUA's recent pass rate, I'm not too surprised, because of the toughness of the cumm shelf. And it is a major enhancement to the future validity, success, and licencing of the school and it's graduates.

[windowlicker]

remember mua wasnt the hardest school to get into, pretty much like all the carib schools
step one is hard, study you will pass after that everything is easy
step 2,3 and specialty boards
mua will allow you to take the steps, its up to you to pass