What's really unfortunate is when people make their educational decisions based on what looks good on paper and not actually what is best for the patient. Each to his or her own.

Listen, if you want to get objective advice I would tell you to flip a coin. But, the reality is that the question is nothing but subjective. Now, looking at your username and doing some math, I'm coming up with you living in LA. You've gotta take you're patient base into account. What do you suspect your future patient base to look like?

yes you clearly did, since you only quoted a portion of her original post

the OP inital question WAS about residency in the US and whether UAG or SGU (et al) was the better option...

and IMHO if practicing in the US is the ultimate goal and patients in the US is ultimately the group that will be your patients, then US Clinical experience will benefit them more in the long run (it does not however make a statement on the quality of experience that you get in either country)- i would say the same if you were picking between US CE and CE in any other country.

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GI Elective [x]....Wards []
Wards [] ............Night Float []
MICU [] .............Wards []
Wards [] ............CCU []
Elective!![]......... PGY 1 1/2 []
VACATION!!!! [] .Move Complete[]

BrendaB_MD, Obviously you are not a representitive for all residency programs.

Every program will be looking for something different. And, most expect you to have no hands on clinical experience. Residency is where you get clinical experience and learn your specialty. They are all going from mostly the same pool of medical students who all have no hands on clinical experience. Just two years of rotations.

Students from the UAG of the future will come with a true full year of hands on clinical experience.

They will also come prepared to be an integral part of a bi-lingual team in situations where it is needed. (Florida, California, Texas, Parts of NYC, and all border states)

If you were head of a medicine program in Florida and had 10 applicants. 9 from average 4 year state medical schools with good scores and one from a good Mexican school with 4 years plus one internship year with good scores.

Who would you take?
Knowing that 30% of the patients at your clinic speak spanish.
Knowing that rotations for 2 years is not like a true clinical situation.

I think that weight can go to someone who has strong spanish background and true clinical experience in the right setting.

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Then again I agree.

If you are at Princeton Plains Teaching Hospital and your resident Lacrosse team is losing their goalie next year. You might need a 6'2" graduate from Dartmouth.

Every program is looking for different things. I would leave a program if I had to cheer an Ivy League football team.

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OK, two things:
1) Students from the US *DO* have hands-on clinical experience, it just varies and depends on the school they attended. This is one of the single biggest lies that is told to us in UAG propaganda--that we will have so much hands-on procedural experience that residency programs will be tripping over themselves to get to us because while US students sit there not knowing what to do when asked to place a central line (or whatever), we're doing it with our eyes closed because we've done dozens. Perhaps so if we did all of our clerkships at hospitals, but based on the actual curriculum of the clinical years, we don't have but 1/3-1/4 of feet-on-the-wards time as US students (or Carib students) in US rotations. It's hard to get experience doing powerpoint presentations from a classroom. The potential to make this true is certainly there (which is why we all bought into it); the implementation as it stands today has been unfortunately wasted. UAG has squandered one of its own greatest strengths by insisting on its own "superior" educational approach that puts us at a disadvantage.

2) Match list statistics are very much relevant in this discussion. I agree that just looking at total numbers is folly, but no one can deny the general downward trend of UAG's numbers, and even more damning from my POV, is that every single year, UAG can not represent every specialty in the match unlike most other Carib. schools. This goes beyond class size--when there is no match in, say, radiology in 3-4 years, something is very, very rotten in the state of Denmark. And don't give me this cloacal discharge about matching outside the match--you can't attribute a 50%+ non-match rate because 40+% of an ENTIRE CLASS was snagged up behind the scenes. Give me a break. Anyway, relevant to the point above, it seems very clear given recent match data that residency programs are NOT wanting UAG grads, not supporting the scenario described above. This even including those NY programs who have a better idea of what UAG grads are capable of, who would be in a position to be less prejudiced having worked with UAG students already.

TO use hexokinases format.

1. I know a student who in first semester was taken to a car accident in an ambulance and put in charge of a patient to keep him stable. When the doctor realized that the spleen had been ruptured he was the one who called time of death.
2. I know a student in second semester who was saw onw, shown one, and did the next one solo on sewing up knife wounds.
3. I have friends that have just finised a 5 semester students who went to Queretero adn spent guardias tending severe wounds as a doctor in charge.
4. My firends are now in Pt. Vallarta doing the same thin in 5th semester doing who knows what. They are not even in internship.

1. Match statistics are just that . Statistics. Thye leave out important point of data as being unweildy. Like Half the class doesn't have English as a first language. Like many students from UAG get chose in the scramble and outside the match. AND VERY MOST OF ALL, UAG is a school that is built around providing primary care physicians that speak Spanish. So it is obvious that more will pick that path.

Hexokniase get off the toilet and stop looking for something where there is nothing.

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If you told me that 50 students out of the fall '07 class and the spring '07 class were going to match into residency in a single year in the future, I would tell you that's about 90% of the students expected to match by looking around the lecture hall right now.

well what do you think rotations are?? You obviously have not applied for a US residency position yet, because they DO indeed want hands on clinical experience. Many places (for IM at least) require anywhere from 3 months to 1 year of US hands on clinical experience, and specifically mention that observerships DO NOT count towards this...


thats easy (and if you think otherwise you are fooling yourself)- the US medical school graduate...you as a foreign graduate with no USCE will need MUCH higher scores- they will look at a US grad with 80s while you will need 90s to compete with them.

in your example, its florida and there are plenty of AMGs that will speak spanish- it won;t be a leg up for you, nor will it overcome your IMG status.


sorry, if you truly think this...then you are in for a rude awakening when you apply to US programs...you will have to apply to twice the programs to get half the interviews.

__________________
GI Elective [x]....Wards []
Wards [] ............Night Float []
MICU [] .............Wards []
Wards [] ............CCU []
Elective!![]......... PGY 1 1/2 []
VACATION!!!! [] .Move Complete[]

I have heard stories like this from UAG as well. I think one can take a number of different perspectives on this. On the one hand, it looks like great experience. On the other, it looks like a very different kind of experience with a very different standard of care. I could easily see how people could view the experience as beneficial or troublesome.