<p>@GreenSage, thank you. You might want to give Judy April a call. Good luck.</p>
<p>@matrixsurgeon, I think it is just the peculiarity of PMLE. BU SMED program is within the same institution and it received more than 1000 applicants last year. Still nearly 100 students were selected for interviews.</p>
<p>Is anyone actually applying to the St. George’s program? I don’t know too much about it and while the word on the street is that it is a wonderful program, I also don’t know of anyone who is actually applying to it or is studying in it.</p>
<p>@GreenSage, do not go to a Caribbean program. You will have difficulty in future to get into good residency program. It used to be a good idea and I know of a few Caribbean graduates who have done well. However, it is getting more and more difficulty for the students to be placed, especially with increasing in the number of places and schools for medicine in this country. You can do a lot better than that!</p>
<p>@IMGDAD Thanks! I was just really curious because my parents thought it seemed kinda nice. Does that mean students applying to residencies from any foreign medical school in general will have a hard time getting into a good program? My parents were considering letting me study in the UK or in a few other countries where we have family living.</p>
<p>@GreenSage, my daughter interviewed at Oxford and was accepted into St Andrew’s for medicine. So, we also considered UK as an option since I was in the UK for 21 years and my wife 26 years before we moved to this country and my wife still has family in the UK. Looking back, I am glad my daughter did not get Oxford and did not want to go to St Andrew’s (even though it is extremely nice and she might have the chance to meet and marry a British prince, ha ha). It is very difficult to return to this country and be able to match into a good program. I came to this country by the backdoor route, at a very senior level and came straight to a position as a Professor. Therefore, it was easy but still, am experiencing some prejudice being an international graduate. So, it is a lot better to stay in the country, if you decide this is where you want to practice and you want to make a home in.</p>
<p>I have some classmates who are applying to the NJIT-St. George’s medical program. One of my classmates said she won’t go if she get’s in for the same reasons as IMGDAD, which I certainly agree with. My other classmate wants to go for this because it has a low SAT requirement (1300 SAT and Top 10% rank). I told him to try for DO programs but he said he really wants an MD degree (which I understand cause there is a bias towards DOs). So, it depends on what you want, but I would not be so inclined towards overseas medical education, for the same reasons as IMGDAD shared.</p>
<p>@CAJ2014, believe me, there is actually more stigma attached to and obstacles posed by being an international medical graduate than being a US DO.</p>
<p>@IMGDAD, I thought they would consider where you graduate if you are an international? Wouldn’t they want someone from a high ranked international college like Oxford? or in this case the medical school…or with great credentials and academia?</p>
<p>@CAJ2014, yes, among the academics, you would obviously be viewed highly for being a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge. However, the British medical schools do not specifically train you for the USMLE Step exams. Also topic emphasis, diseases, and treatment are not exactly the same. So it is more difficult to get a good score. The graduate date also is out of sync with that in this country so you will end up wasting the first year after graduation since you only graduate in the UK sometimes in July, after the residency program has already started in this country. If you decide to do postgraduate training in the UK, like what I did, you will have a lot of difficulties trying to prove to the various State Medical Board that the training is equivalent to get a license in the state, unless you come in at a very senior level so that you will function with a university professor license.</p>
<p>@IMGDAD, I didn’t know all that until you told me. Thanks for the insight!</p>
<p>Yeah, I agree with IMGDAD because two of my aunts were MD graduates at foreign universities and then they had to write the USMLE steps here to get into residency programs (i think one went to emory for a while). Granted, they are general physicians, but they tried really hard so i would think getting a higher level residency would be near impossible.</p>
<p>Is anyone here a physician, or know one for that matter, and give us an overview of the lifestyle of a doctor? It’s always perceived as a job that never ends with long.hours and.on.call and i.wanted to know for sure. What specialties are the busiest, and which aren’t? Thanks!!</p>
<p>greensage - everyone needs to take the same USMLE steps in order to land a residency. However, many have issues landing residencies due to visa status and not being able to land interviews as foreign medical graduates.</p>
<p>@Carpediem2424, life as a physician is what you make of it, like in any other professions. I enjoy it very much and was trained in an era that it was not uncommon to work for a stretch of 100 hours over the weekend (obviously you get to sleep at night if it is not busy) and I think this is a very important part of training. Unfortunately, things have changed in recent years in both side of the Atlantic so that junior doctors are longer allowed to work more than, I think, 60 hours a week, including being on call. I always argue that physician training is like apprenticeship and the more you do and the more you are exposed to, the better you would be in your trade. However, the argument from the other side if that you may not be able to make decision rationally if you are tired (I personally do not agree. I remember who my adrenaline just shot up when I was busy because I was just so enthusiastic and excited when there were more patients to see and more problems to solve). This change has resulted in a culture that many junior doctors are now adopting or be trained into a culture that as a doctor, you are no different from any other job and you just clock out after you night on-call and leave the problems to the other physicians. As a result, the junior doctors are no longer trained in providing continuity of care for the patients. My anxiety about this is widely shared by many physicians of my era and many are saying that the quality of the young physicians are no longer the same as before. Having said that, there is no reason why you need to be the same. If you take medicine as a profession, then act professionally and you will enjoy it, rather than treating it like just a job. You will enjoy it if you feel that this is your calling and you have a mission to accomplish. That is even though I graduated from Med school 30 years ago, I still enjoy everyday of it (obviously there will be the ups and downs but overall I recommend it highly!).</p>
<p>@IMGDAD, thanks for your perspective! Being a doc is a goal of mine, and my uncle, a PA, tells me to choose my specialty wisely b/c he sees the strain the extreme hours physicians endure. I want to live a life aside from work and was looking for the perspective of docs to address this.issue. How.many hours do you typically work? Do you see specialties that are more demanding than others?</p>
<p>@Carpediem2424, “extreme hours” is a relative term. To one person, anything more than 40 hours is consider “extreme hours” but it might not be for another person, even if he/she is working up to 80 hours a week. It very much depends on how you manage your time and what you consider your priority. For me, I consider my family as my top priority but still unwilling to compromise on my job satisfaction. I start going into my office every morning before 6 am and work very hard, and still have a lot of fun, and usually manage to finish the day by 3 pm so that I go home and spend time with my family. I see that a lot of physicians who are stressed by the hours are generally those who are not really happy with what they are doing, i.e. medicine is just a job for them. My impression is that if you are a general surgeon, orthopedic surgeon, cardiologist, and gastroenterologist, you work harder. However, remember that you will still be working in a team and so it does not mean you will be working all the time. Less time demanding specialty would be dermatologist, radiologist, radiation oncologist, and neurologist. If all you want is to make a good living and do whatever you can when you are working, being a hospitalist is an option. Most hospitalists work one week on and one week off, with shift work and starting pay for a hospitalist after finishing residency program is between $200k-300k. It is a noble profession but can you imagine yourself working like a resident for the rest of your life? I know of many happy hospitalists who are making a lot more than most primary physicians and some specialists in internal medicine and still have a lot of free time since you are effectively working only part time, i.e. two weeks in a month.</p>
<p>@IMGDAD, thanks again. Do you have any information in relation to emergency medicine? My uncle told.me they also have shift work. But i really appreciate your input overall. I think medicine is truly based upon what you make of.it, and you must go into it for the right reasoning. What specialty do work with?</p>
<p>I know IMGDAD can answer all the questions about every type of medicine but I do want to make one point.</p>
<p>For those applying for BS/MD, it is one thing to get into a program and another to decide on a specialty for a doctor. Most of you will not be any close to choosing one until you have your USMLE scores, did some rotations and feel the kinship to a specific type of medicine. </p>
<p>I see that time line being 5-7 years from now depending on whether you get into 6, 7, or 8 year program.</p>
<p>Agree with texaspg. I think it is rather premature to think about specialization, even before getting into medicine. In fact, I have been told that students who say that they are committed to one particular specialty in medicine at this point would not be viewed favorably. Medical schools want to see that you are committed to medicine but not to any particular area at this point, except for those program specifically intended to train physician scientists. I would like to see high school students being extremely enthusiastic, and yet simplistic, about wanting to do medicine, without thinking about the financial side or the extreme hard life of the profession, but just trying to follow his/her calling and dream.</p>