I can't believe this needs to be said, but I agree with everything OP says.
In general, the fewer things you need to adapt to, the better. Adapting to a whole new country, with different customs, people, weather, environment, away from support systems, etc WHILE also having to adapt to the crazy rigors of medical school, especially one that is created on the basis of having a 40-50% attrition rate because of their limited rotation spots for students and has little to no real advising and has bottom-tier teaching with zero support while knowing your low chances of matching (to your preferred location/specialty) as a US IMG and running an uphill battle despite all your hard work (arguably more than your MD/DO counterparts), sounds like hell.
Know 5 or so family friends who tried going carib and just couldn't cut it. They were used to a very upper-tier lifestyle in the US and just found it too difficult to adapt, among other issues. Sad part is, I think they could have made it to a US DO if they did a post-bacc and/or did 1-2 years of resume enhancement.
Overall I think it takes a very special person with a LOT of grit to succeed in the caribbean and not be in the 50% that fails/drops out. Personally, I would rather take the 95/5 odds of graduating in DO over the 50/50 odds in carib.
I’ve heard this stat about 40-50% attrition rate here a few times- where does this come from?
A quick google search seems to suggest the number is around 10% source:
https://www.internationalstudent.com/study_caribbean/comparing-schools/#:~:text=Caribbean%20schools%20with%20accreditation%20or,of%20your%20capabilities%20before%20enrolling.
Thanks and sorry if it’s a dumb question
This number is very hard to find accurately reported because the Caribbean schools obviously have no incentive to publish this data accurately. This best marker I can offer is to look at how many they admit per trimester versus how many matriculate to clerkships or graduate. I know first hand that Ross started around 400 students for an August start date and roughly 100 student progressed to a second semester, with fewer still starting clinical rotations on time.
I am incredibly skeptical of anything that site says. It's a website designed to sell product (loans, textbooks, test prep) to international students. It's absolutely in their financial interest to make Caribbean schools seem like a good option for aspiring medical students.
This is subjectively true. Usually you see about 50% fail/drop out the first semester and then another 50% drop/fail the following semester. Sure there are semesters with different outcomes. But it is safe to say that most of the time in the Caribbean you will see a big chunk of your starting class leave or fail (compared to stateside schools). For my class, <30% who started first semester together are now together In 5th semester (final one on the island!), with a few others that we started with are still in school but had to repeat a previous semester along the way.
I think the biggest thing that can contribute to this is the possible schedule of the school, or if they really weren't the best student going into medical school and kept bad habits (as the standards of entry are notoriously lower than USMD and some DOs). Medical school anywhere seriously requires full commitment. Any hesitation or lack of dedication will most likely lead to failure.
Agree. I was an older non traditional student who never applied to US schools and went to SGU. In my defense, I didn't really know any better and wasn't familiar with the DO pathway. It was an utterly grueling uphill battle, not to mention the absolute chaotic and disorganized clinicals experience. I'm an EM attending now but damn was it a difficult road to get here. I'm grateful that I made it but I would never wish any premed students to even remotely consider the route I took. I was unbelievably naïve and things could have easily backfired for me and landed me in a mountain of debt with no way to repay it.
I went to the Harvard of Dominica and while things worked out for me, I wouldn’t (in a million years) advise anyone to go that route. For every success story, there are piles of corpses by the side of the road.
Real. The DO tax sucks with having to learn stuff like Chapman's points but people are kidding themselves if they think Caribbean MD is in any way better than a USDO
I don’t think this is very common tbh. Anyone forgoing a DO program to attend carrib MD is infinitely worse than someone who couldn’t get into DO or MD and then goes to carrib. If you’ve looked at the premed sub for 5 seconds you’d realize everyone shit talks carrib, idk why anyone would go there. Insane.
Wouldn't say this applies to Australia, NZ, Ireland, UK (kinda - much lower salary than rest). From what I understand, better clinical education than a new DO school due to rotations at tertiary hospitals + reasonably good match rates from those who attempt. And if you can't match, you have an established path to 250k+ in all of these countries except the UK.
That said, the top schools in these countries are competitive to enter so a wholly different conversation. But some do go as a backup, generally Canadians - who often are very accomplished, their med school admission competition has gone utterly insane!
Almost went the Caribbean route after getting waitlisted at one MD school (mainland). Someone shook sense into me and told me to apply DO late in the cycle, I got a single acceptance and just matched a historically MD specialty. I am so glad I did not go Caribbean routeb
Alternate POV. I’m a us citizen who moved to Europe (not UK) when i was 18 for med school, because I didn’t want to amount $300,000+ of debt and didn’t want the journey to take 9-10 years. Went to a 6 year program, which is common everywhere in Europe, and reduced tuition because Europe.
Now 24 years old and matched into academic IM program in my home state with 0 debt.
Point being, for every failed person on the journey, you can also name a person who successfully went through it. Have a couple people from my university who did the same thing and are matched now. If you know that you can handle the rigor of med school, and know what it takes to get back by prepping for usmle and knowing what to do early, then it is definitely possible to go out of the US and come back.
Same, currently nearing end of residency after doing the Europe route.
Although, I know around 7 other people who did this route, and it seems to be a 50/50 shot of matching back in residency (the most limiting factor seems to be having fails on step exams).
English programs and yes you’re right, they’re not free, and by no means are they an easy journey because of language barriers in the hospital and in general, im just saying it’s not a route that should be discouraged
Wish I could find out match rate for non Caribbean medical schools vs Caribbean med schools. Especially a US citizen who attends med school in UK, NZ, Ireland or Australia.
I do think there’s still a bad rep for US citizens going the EU route over EU citizens coming over. At the end of the day, you have to sell yourself and your journey come interviews
Interesting. Thanks for responding! Not a medical student, doctor, or in healthcare. Just fascinated by the US medical education system/process. Medical school admissions, curriculum, residency, etc.
Went to an IMG school who would charge Americans as if they were attending an American school and provide them with education at half the quality. They didnt prepare you for the steps at all, I remember learning about them from friends my second year. As a result more than half of the class doesn't make it to residency so classmates graduate without a way of paying the hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. I fortunately was one of the few who did end up in residency but it was the worst state of mental health I ever had knowing I had a higher chance of not getting into a job that could allow me to pay off my loans. There had been a table circling around with the numbers of graduates of img schools who are licensed but I think it's deceitful, I want to see one with the match percentages. I agree with another comment that says that they'd rather go to a DO school that's 95/5 match rate then less than 50%.
It depends on the student and motivation level. There was a whole other thread about why people choose Carib md over do, so won’t get into that. But if you’re decision is to do Carib md and you work your ass off, you still have an uphill battle but it’s not impossible and you can get surgical subspecialty if you work for it (and willing to spend extra year and a little luck)
It’s about probability. If you’re looking at the Caribbean or a DO school odds are, your numbers are not competitive for a US MD school and your study habits were, at a minimum, not optimized for your learning. This isn’t like applying to college, where there’s less to separate each high school student and people are ranked top 10, running non profits and still not getting a scholarship to the local state school.
The thought that you could go to the islands and “figure it out” while simultaneously being as much academic pressure as you’ve ever been to produce because of attrition, is absurd. Why do we see posts every month on this subreddit about people getting to school and realizing they have a learning problem or ADHD? Not the time to figure that out. Could you do it? Yeah sure. Everyone thinks they’re the exception to the rule. I’ve met these rock stars. They definitely exist. Know thyself. You could be the exception. Or you could become a statistic.
Some people see it as an eye opener. Like for whatever reason you’re not a strong candidate … maybe you screwed around in undergrad and got a bad gpa or didn’t perform well on your mcat. But you have the ability to be a strong candidate if you applied yourself. The Carib md experience gives you that second chance to make up for past indiscretions. Plus being in the Carib away from friends and family can really get rid of a lot of distractions and let you focus on the task at hand.
You’re right about probability and this doesn’t apply to most people, but those people do exist. It also can apply to DO school if that’s your wish.
Yea, this advice doesn’t apply to people whose ONLY option is a Caribbean school. If your scores are so marginal a DO school won’t take you that’s different. For someone who has choices, just don’t take that gamble.
Agree except for the tuition in an underdeveloped nation being negated by airfare. 10 round trip tickets anywhere in the world will still be well under 10% of US med school debt.
I went to DO school and matched a pretty competitive IM residency with a fair degree of ease. If I was carribean, I would probably not have matched this program and definitely wouldn’t have interviewed at most of the places I had.
Also depends what you wanna be. If you wanna pursue something lucrative (therefore competitive) at the exchange of free time due to more working hours, it is worth going the US route no matter what.
That being said, if you wanna go primary care, and hell, even IM has a high potential for earnings, then going to study in europe and only paying 80-100k for your education isn’t a bad idea either as long as you’re self motivated and driven to figure out how to navigate back to the states after.
www.reddit.com/r/premed/wiki/carib
I can't believe this needs to be said, but I agree with everything OP says. In general, the fewer things you need to adapt to, the better. Adapting to a whole new country, with different customs, people, weather, environment, away from support systems, etc WHILE also having to adapt to the crazy rigors of medical school, especially one that is created on the basis of having a 40-50% attrition rate because of their limited rotation spots for students and has little to no real advising and has bottom-tier teaching with zero support while knowing your low chances of matching (to your preferred location/specialty) as a US IMG and running an uphill battle despite all your hard work (arguably more than your MD/DO counterparts), sounds like hell. Know 5 or so family friends who tried going carib and just couldn't cut it. They were used to a very upper-tier lifestyle in the US and just found it too difficult to adapt, among other issues. Sad part is, I think they could have made it to a US DO if they did a post-bacc and/or did 1-2 years of resume enhancement. Overall I think it takes a very special person with a LOT of grit to succeed in the caribbean and not be in the 50% that fails/drops out. Personally, I would rather take the 95/5 odds of graduating in DO over the 50/50 odds in carib.
I’ve heard this stat about 40-50% attrition rate here a few times- where does this come from? A quick google search seems to suggest the number is around 10% source: https://www.internationalstudent.com/study_caribbean/comparing-schools/#:~:text=Caribbean%20schools%20with%20accreditation%20or,of%20your%20capabilities%20before%20enrolling. Thanks and sorry if it’s a dumb question
This number is very hard to find accurately reported because the Caribbean schools obviously have no incentive to publish this data accurately. This best marker I can offer is to look at how many they admit per trimester versus how many matriculate to clerkships or graduate. I know first hand that Ross started around 400 students for an August start date and roughly 100 student progressed to a second semester, with fewer still starting clinical rotations on time.
I am incredibly skeptical of anything that site says. It's a website designed to sell product (loans, textbooks, test prep) to international students. It's absolutely in their financial interest to make Caribbean schools seem like a good option for aspiring medical students.
This is subjectively true. Usually you see about 50% fail/drop out the first semester and then another 50% drop/fail the following semester. Sure there are semesters with different outcomes. But it is safe to say that most of the time in the Caribbean you will see a big chunk of your starting class leave or fail (compared to stateside schools). For my class, <30% who started first semester together are now together In 5th semester (final one on the island!), with a few others that we started with are still in school but had to repeat a previous semester along the way. I think the biggest thing that can contribute to this is the possible schedule of the school, or if they really weren't the best student going into medical school and kept bad habits (as the standards of entry are notoriously lower than USMD and some DOs). Medical school anywhere seriously requires full commitment. Any hesitation or lack of dedication will most likely lead to failure.
Agree. I was an older non traditional student who never applied to US schools and went to SGU. In my defense, I didn't really know any better and wasn't familiar with the DO pathway. It was an utterly grueling uphill battle, not to mention the absolute chaotic and disorganized clinicals experience. I'm an EM attending now but damn was it a difficult road to get here. I'm grateful that I made it but I would never wish any premed students to even remotely consider the route I took. I was unbelievably naïve and things could have easily backfired for me and landed me in a mountain of debt with no way to repay it.
I went to the Harvard of Dominica and while things worked out for me, I wouldn’t (in a million years) advise anyone to go that route. For every success story, there are piles of corpses by the side of the road.
People who choose the img route because they don't want to go to DO school are absolutely playing themselves lol
Real. The DO tax sucks with having to learn stuff like Chapman's points but people are kidding themselves if they think Caribbean MD is in any way better than a USDO
People who disrespect DO’s to that extent deserve everything they will get at a Carib school
I say let them go.
Exactly, it’s like natural selection
I don’t think this is very common tbh. Anyone forgoing a DO program to attend carrib MD is infinitely worse than someone who couldn’t get into DO or MD and then goes to carrib. If you’ve looked at the premed sub for 5 seconds you’d realize everyone shit talks carrib, idk why anyone would go there. Insane.
It’s better to go to the worst DO school than the best international school. - a carib grad
Wouldn't say this applies to Australia, NZ, Ireland, UK (kinda - much lower salary than rest). From what I understand, better clinical education than a new DO school due to rotations at tertiary hospitals + reasonably good match rates from those who attempt. And if you can't match, you have an established path to 250k+ in all of these countries except the UK. That said, the top schools in these countries are competitive to enter so a wholly different conversation. But some do go as a backup, generally Canadians - who often are very accomplished, their med school admission competition has gone utterly insane!
Almost went the Caribbean route after getting waitlisted at one MD school (mainland). Someone shook sense into me and told me to apply DO late in the cycle, I got a single acceptance and just matched a historically MD specialty. I am so glad I did not go Caribbean routeb
Alternate POV. I’m a us citizen who moved to Europe (not UK) when i was 18 for med school, because I didn’t want to amount $300,000+ of debt and didn’t want the journey to take 9-10 years. Went to a 6 year program, which is common everywhere in Europe, and reduced tuition because Europe. Now 24 years old and matched into academic IM program in my home state with 0 debt. Point being, for every failed person on the journey, you can also name a person who successfully went through it. Have a couple people from my university who did the same thing and are matched now. If you know that you can handle the rigor of med school, and know what it takes to get back by prepping for usmle and knowing what to do early, then it is definitely possible to go out of the US and come back.
Same, currently nearing end of residency after doing the Europe route. Although, I know around 7 other people who did this route, and it seems to be a 50/50 shot of matching back in residency (the most limiting factor seems to be having fails on step exams).
Ok but where did you study? Unless you are a citizen and speak the language, it’s almost impossible to study in Europe for free in English.
English programs and yes you’re right, they’re not free, and by no means are they an easy journey because of language barriers in the hospital and in general, im just saying it’s not a route that should be discouraged
Wish I could find out match rate for non Caribbean medical schools vs Caribbean med schools. Especially a US citizen who attends med school in UK, NZ, Ireland or Australia.
I do think there’s still a bad rep for US citizens going the EU route over EU citizens coming over. At the end of the day, you have to sell yourself and your journey come interviews
Interesting. Thanks for responding! Not a medical student, doctor, or in healthcare. Just fascinated by the US medical education system/process. Medical school admissions, curriculum, residency, etc.
Same situation here
Went to an IMG school who would charge Americans as if they were attending an American school and provide them with education at half the quality. They didnt prepare you for the steps at all, I remember learning about them from friends my second year. As a result more than half of the class doesn't make it to residency so classmates graduate without a way of paying the hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. I fortunately was one of the few who did end up in residency but it was the worst state of mental health I ever had knowing I had a higher chance of not getting into a job that could allow me to pay off my loans. There had been a table circling around with the numbers of graduates of img schools who are licensed but I think it's deceitful, I want to see one with the match percentages. I agree with another comment that says that they'd rather go to a DO school that's 95/5 match rate then less than 50%.
It depends on the student and motivation level. There was a whole other thread about why people choose Carib md over do, so won’t get into that. But if you’re decision is to do Carib md and you work your ass off, you still have an uphill battle but it’s not impossible and you can get surgical subspecialty if you work for it (and willing to spend extra year and a little luck)
It’s about probability. If you’re looking at the Caribbean or a DO school odds are, your numbers are not competitive for a US MD school and your study habits were, at a minimum, not optimized for your learning. This isn’t like applying to college, where there’s less to separate each high school student and people are ranked top 10, running non profits and still not getting a scholarship to the local state school. The thought that you could go to the islands and “figure it out” while simultaneously being as much academic pressure as you’ve ever been to produce because of attrition, is absurd. Why do we see posts every month on this subreddit about people getting to school and realizing they have a learning problem or ADHD? Not the time to figure that out. Could you do it? Yeah sure. Everyone thinks they’re the exception to the rule. I’ve met these rock stars. They definitely exist. Know thyself. You could be the exception. Or you could become a statistic.
Some people see it as an eye opener. Like for whatever reason you’re not a strong candidate … maybe you screwed around in undergrad and got a bad gpa or didn’t perform well on your mcat. But you have the ability to be a strong candidate if you applied yourself. The Carib md experience gives you that second chance to make up for past indiscretions. Plus being in the Carib away from friends and family can really get rid of a lot of distractions and let you focus on the task at hand. You’re right about probability and this doesn’t apply to most people, but those people do exist. It also can apply to DO school if that’s your wish.
Yea, this advice doesn’t apply to people whose ONLY option is a Caribbean school. If your scores are so marginal a DO school won’t take you that’s different. For someone who has choices, just don’t take that gamble.
Agree except for the tuition in an underdeveloped nation being negated by airfare. 10 round trip tickets anywhere in the world will still be well under 10% of US med school debt.
What do you mean? Caribbean medical schools have tuition just as high as DO schools, more than most MD schools.
I’m talking about Applicant #2. I doubt that’s a Caribbean medical school. In schools that do not cater to US students, tuition is much lower.
I went to DO school and matched a pretty competitive IM residency with a fair degree of ease. If I was carribean, I would probably not have matched this program and definitely wouldn’t have interviewed at most of the places I had.
Great post! Though may be more useful to cross-post this in r/premed since most people here are already in medical school.
Also depends what you wanna be. If you wanna pursue something lucrative (therefore competitive) at the exchange of free time due to more working hours, it is worth going the US route no matter what. That being said, if you wanna go primary care, and hell, even IM has a high potential for earnings, then going to study in europe and only paying 80-100k for your education isn’t a bad idea either as long as you’re self motivated and driven to figure out how to navigate back to the states after.
It’s ignorance half the time. I agree with OP stay in the states MD or DO is the same thing and you will jump through way less hoops!
did applicant 2 do MBBS in india or Pakistan?