Thread: General Questions

I saw this post in the Caribbean forum of studentdoctor.net... no one was responding there so I thought I would post what the person said here since I was also wondering some of the answers to these questions.

I know many of these are general and been discussed ad nauseam, but I thought it would be nice to hear some opinions. Short, simple responses are fine.

Thanks....

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"Hi everyone

First off this is not an attack on those who have chosen the Caribbean route. I have worked with a few excellent physicians who have come from C. schools. I just have some honest questions and would like to see egos checked at the door and get honest answers. I am putting togeather a survey.

For those in school now:

1) Do you no wish you would have stayed in the US and tried harder to get into a US MD/DO school?

2) Has your experience been good to date? Or do you feel like you just apart of a money making venture?

3) Do you find there are alot of people around your quitting for various reasons? Is it mostly due to family issues or inability to make the grades?

4) Did you ever consider a EU school? Why or Why not?

5) What do you expect your total debt will be? Do you feel this is worth it?

6) was the Caribbean your "last resort" attempt at med school? If not why?

8) How is life different there? What do you like dislike?

For those in residency:

1) Have you ever felt discriminated against as a C. intern/resident?

2) Did you feel it was much more difficult to Match?

3) did you feel you were prepared to do well on the USMLEs or did you feel you had to do it on your own?

4) Did you accept a residency you didnt really want to get back into the USA?

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i will answer some of these when i have time...just too many questions in one post. try running a search in the mean time.

1) No. I'm 30 though, and was changing careers so my situation was a little different. Speed of entrance was a large concern of mine at the time.

2) Good experience for the most part. Make no mistake about it though, the school is here to make money. However, that is the point of all of this isn't it? So, I can't blame them for that characteristic alone.

3) Hmm, what is "quitting"? Deceling into the alternate program? Sure, I know many people that have done this. I know a few that have quit altogether. I wasn't privy to all of their reasoning, so I can't speculate.

4) No I didn't. My preliminary research indicated that EU medical schools were not oriented towards taking USMLE board exams, and the statistics that I looked at showed a marked decrease in performance when compared to the caribbean medical schools. Again though, this was very preliminary research. I really wasn't that familiar with EU schools, and still am not. I wanted to go to an overseas school that had a proliferance of U.S. students.

5) 200-250K when it is all said and done. I wouldn't be here if I didn't think it was "worth it". This is a very ambiguous question though. The exorbitant cost is "worth it" in the sense that I would probably be willing to pay almost anything within reason to become a doctor. Does that make the cost "fair"? Of course not. I still think the school and the education is way too expensive. Don't go into this sort of debt unless you are extremely, and I mean extremely sure about devoting the rest of your life to medicine.

6) No it wasn't. SGU was the only medical school that I applied to. As I said before, my circumstance was a little different. My statistics were average but not competitive. It was pretty much a given that I would need to bring my MCAT up a few points, and invest another year or two playing the application/waitlist game. I would have done this if I were 23 or 24, but I was nearing 30 and changing careers, and I was already familiar with the "caribbean" route in that a friend of mine graduated from Ross. I was fairly certain that I had a good chance of entry for SGU, and I wanted to start medical school as soon as possible. I also was not interested in some of the more competitive residencies such as ortho or derm, ENT, etc.. The alternative was to imagine 2-3 yrs in the future after sitting on waitlists and then having to apply to a caribbean school. This scenario was unacceptable to me.

7) Vague question. It's a medical school in a developing country, so everything is different. There's always things to complain about in a place like this, but that doesn't help anything. You always have to keep your focus on why you are here, and keep your eyes on the prize. It's really not that bad.

Hope that helps.

i will just answer this.....so far everything is just fine and everything will be worth it (including the debt about 250K)...

Good post Groove