<p>I was wondering what the best carribean med school is? are there any that are actually accredited by U.S.</p>
<p>The only schools accredited in the US are those by accredited by the LCME and they include all Canadian schools and American, and Puerto Rico med schools.</p>
<p>Caribbean med schools are the so called "off shore" schools which usually try to develop some type of affiliation with US and UK hospitals for their clinical rotations. No US med school has any direct affiliation with them, but what you find are community hospitals, etc that have residency programs and allow caribbean students to rotate, etc.</p>
<p>The most popular is St George's, in Grenada which according to foreign medical graduates is "the best".</p>
<p>In short, these schools are strictly private business entities and were created to profit from american med students who do not gain admission in the US and decide to take that route. Most students are "non-traditional" students.</p>
<p>Yeah St. George's and Ross are the most highly regarded medical schools in the caribbean. </p>
<p>The other 2 of the so-called "Big 4" caribbean medical schools - AUC (American University of the Caribbean) and Saba, are slightly less reputable, but are still accredited by California (as well as the other states that inspect these schools individually). CA accreditation is usually the big talking point for a caribbean school. If it doesn't have that, its not one you want to go to.</p>
<p>But all of the Big 4 will allow you to get a license in any state, they teach all classes in English, and many don't even require you to be in the caribbean for 2 full years. You do like 18 months on the islands, then come back to the states for your rotations.</p>
<p>Downsides obviously are many - they are wildly expensive (these are for-profit institutions we're talking about), have high drop-out/failure rates, and there will be many more hoops to jump through to get back to the US as a licensed physician. But for some people, they are the best/only option.</p>
<p>Anyone thinking about going to a carribean school and then returning to practice in the US needs to be well aware of the difficulty these graduates have in getting a residency spot.</p>
<p>US International Med Grads only matched at a 52% rate in 2008, compared to the 94.2% rate for US Seniors. (Table 6)</p>
<p>Table 2 in this document shows the number of US IMG's who got into each specialty in 2008 - </p>
<p>Anesthesia: (PG1 and PG2 total)
Total spots - 1364
Spots filled by US IMG - 56</p>
<p>Emergency (PG1 and PG2 total)
Spots - 1475
USIMG's - 65</p>
<p>Internal Medicine
4858
421</p>
<p>OB/GYN
1163
77</p>
<p>Pediatrics
2382
132</p>
<p>Plastics
92
2</p>
<p>Radiology (PG1 and PG2 total)
1085
30</p>
<p>General Surgery
1069
45</p>
<p>Ortho
636
6</p>
<p>ENT, Optho, Derm and Neurosurg took a combine zero US IMG's in 2008</p>
<p>There are extreme risks to going to the Caribbean.</p>
<p>if only 94% of US seniors match, what actually happens to the other 6%?</p>
<p>This wonderful thing called the Scramble :)</p>
<p>Does Scramble essentially equal grovel!!??</p>
<p>Essentially haha... so after the match computer has figured out where everyone is going, you get an e-mail saying that either you did match or that you did not match. At that point, if you didn't match, you are in the Scramble, where everyone who didn't match starts calling programs with open slots trying to get a commitment from them. There are almost always a few open slots in every specialty, and there are a lot for transitional surgery or medicine slots, so most (if not all) people are successful in the Scramble at getting in somewhere</p>
<p>Also, some US medical school graduates decide they don't want to be practicing physicians. Some choose to go into business, some choose to go work for a law firm, etc.</p>
<p>
[quote]
There are extreme risks to going to the Caribbean.
[/quote]
That may be overly pessimistic, at least for the intelligent, motivated student that did not make the US med school admissions cut (e.g., had too much fun freshman year). Firstly, the 52% placement is perhaps not so terrible, given this cohort is likely statistically below the US group. And the absolute numbers need to to be corrected for the applicant pool, which was 5X larger for US-trained. So, while its much more likely you'll be working in an under-resourced inner city hospital than performing liposuction in Beverly Hills, a serious student can succeed in this pathway (and might even become a better physician).</p>
<p><a href="and%20might%20even%20become%20a%20better%20physician">quote</a>.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I am always amused by these comments.</p>