@PurpleTitan The recent residency match statistics for graduates of the Irish medical schools (Trinity, UCD, RCSI) grads are excellent, though things may change in the future. For someone wanting to get a medical degree and practice in the U.S., while skipping perhaps a couple of years or so of undergrad, especially someone with U.S. citizenship so there’s no immigration impediment to practicing in the U.S., the highly respected Irish medical schools are a good choice. There are plenty of grads from those schools who are now in selective specialties in the U.S. Other things being equal, better to go to a very good U.S. medical school (after completing a very good 4-year undergrad program), but for some people, time is money (and money is money–re: tuition and other expenses) and therefore it’s better to get into (and through) medical school sooner. It’s a different story for the Caribbean medical schools, which have different issues.
@roethlisburger @TomSrOfBoston I can chime in on a few of the issues here… I was born and raised and went to school (college; two graduate degrees) in Canada, but now live in California (moved to USA over 15 years ago). I can say that both Roethlisburger and TomSr are correct, in a way (how’s that for a diplomatic answer). No doubt that there are similar cities in Canada/USA that are much more similar than intra-country regions in both countries. Specifically, I’m thinking of: Vancouver/Seattle; Calgary/Denver (sort of); Toronto/Chicago (sort of). The difference between living in these cities (all of which I’ve spent significant time in) would be much less than the difference between, say, Seattle and Tulsa, Oklahoma or Little Rock, AR. I agree with Roethlisburger on that. But TomSr is right that there are some core values/outlooks that many/most Canadians have that are a bit different than what many/most Americans think (e.g., on socialized-universal healthcare, gun control, the advisability of U.S. foreign policy/wars, social welfare programs, etc.). But depending on where you choose to live (or move to), you can find like-minded people in the U.S., if you’re originally Canadian, and vice versa. Some overall differences (viva les differences!) but a lot of overlap too.
The past does not predict the future.
Very soon, for the first time ever, the US will start having more med school grads than residency slots.
My point still stands that for an American looking at med school now, I would not recommend leaving North America.
My niece is going to Ottowa. Her first choice US university (NYU) only offered her January admission in NYC with first a semester abroad. She was actually pretty tempted, but Ottowa offered a freshman program of study that she thought sounded interesting and was much cheaper.
There are always a handful of kids from our high school who go to Canada. If anyone went to Europe, I didn’t hear about it.
“@DadTwoGirls Kid, whose parent’s sent their kids abroad for education, can not get admission in ultra selective US Collegesl,”
not true at all. She is the number 1 student in her high school. She is going abroad because she wants to.
@mathmom Not to be a pedantic stickler on spelling, but if your niece is going to school in Ottawa, then I would point out to you, just for your future use with her, that the capital of Canada is spelled as I just did (with just one “O” at the beginning). I hope she enjoys her new school in Ottawa! I expect it will be a highly enriching experience! Cheers.
She just finished up her first year and seemed happy with the experience. I definitely am not up on my Canadian geography! 
McGill has always been popular here, and intermittently the University of Toronto (which, frankly, probably has the better faculty in most areas). The kid who takes care of our pets while we’re away – who is a super kid – is going to McGill in a couple of months. My daughter’s high school BFF turned down Penn for a humanities honors program at McGill, and it couldn’t have worked out better. She loved McGill, was much in demand when she applied to graduate schools, and just got her PhD from Penn. A close friend of my son’s went to Toronto and walked into a top-ranked philosophy PhD program straight out of college.
We also know a smattering of St. Andrews kids, but not well enough to have a good sense of how they really feel about it. We know kids who have been accepted at Oxbridge colleges from high school, but they all wound up going to HYPS instead. We were close to an Australian expatriate family whose children seriously considered college in Australia (and they each did a year of high school in Australia) before choosing US Ivy League colleges.
It’s been common for years for U.S. kids to go to foreign medical schools, but only if they can’t get into medical school here. I also know a handful of people now in their 30s who went abroad, other than to England, for other graduate school. No success stories there, yet. They all wound up transferring to US institutions.
I can only speak of the UK but prestige is all about academic standards. The smartest kids get in the highest ranked schools it is the only metric which counts. Costs vary very little from university to university and so finance is not that big of a deal, although living costs in London can be a major turn off. D1 is currently in UK, D3 will follow. In the UK it is generally smaller classes, no repeating high school senior year and as a donut family substantially cheaper.
This is a sort of legacy/developmental provision for Oxbridge admissions, but the threshold in terms of who’s eligible is much narrower(almost always royalty and aristocrats from UK and foreign countries) and there is a reasonably minimum academic bar to meet(Reason why Prince Harry wasn’t able to gain admission to any colleges and opted to attend RMA Sandhurst directly from British Public School).
Like his father Prince Charles, Prince William could have attended an Oxbridge college with grades which were below the minimum cutoffs for everyone else. However, unlike his father, he made a public statement vowing that he’ll only attend colleges to which he earned admission on his academic merits. Thus, the reason why he opted to attend St. Andrews.
Also, the minimum academic expectations of incoming/continuing students is much higher than in many elite US undergrad schools. An acquaintance and a friend who taught classes/tutorials at Oxbridge and at elite US universities(Ivies) both said that some of the US elite undergrads they’ve taught would have struggled unusually heavily to keep up at Oxbridge,and not only the first-year students.
I have worked with one person who did their Bachelor’s at the University of Toronto and Masters at Stanford, and another who did their Bachelor’s at Toronto and their Master’s and PhD at Princeton. Clearly top US university admissions officers understand the strength of at least some foreign schools.
The admissions standards vary wildly between degree programs. Even more than US schools. Prince William may have met the standards for Geography at St. Andrews, I suspect he would not have for Physics.
A large part of that is because applying to UK universities is much more like applying to MA/MS programs here in the US. Someone who has academic merit requirements to gain admission to do an MS in Physics at Stanford may not meet the minimum standard to study Poli-Sci there.
This is also a reason why if one changes one’s mind on majors, they must start all over again…much like US MA/MS or PhD programs.
Oxbridge is simply more academically-oriented.
The UK Unis as a whole are more like grad-school-lite, with the last 3 years at UK unis if studying a single subject being akin to the years in a major + a 1 year master’s.
The way several Oxbridge/UK Uni alums and the ones who taught at Oxbridge and US Elite Us(Ivies) put it, that’s largely correct…cept the 1 year’s masters would only be applicable if the required lower-level grad level courses weren’t included in the Masters portion as they’d have been covered at a much earlier stage of one’s Oxbridge undergrad education.
There are around 500k kids go to university in the UK every year, approx 7k of these end up at Oxbridge. There are thousands and thousands of kids with near perfect grades who don’t get in but some with less than perfect who do, the interview is looking for potential. If you look at the average entry tariffs of UK universities you will find where the majority of those rejected kids go. I still think it is true you can walk from St John’s college Oxford to St Johns college Cambridge on land owned by either college, so the universities are not short of resources.
And let’s be real here. The future King of England could have gotten admission to ANY college in the US, too 
Of course. Not surprising considering the threshold of eligibility for legacy/developmental admits is so much wider at US elite private colleges compared with UK colleges…including Oxbridge.
Evidence, please. Afaik, the number of ‘royalty and aristocrats from UK’ undergrads at Oxbridge hovers near 0. Titles are vanishingly rare.
(William did do a vocational post-grad land management course at Cambridge recently)
There was the son of the sultan of Brunei 20 years ago…rumour had it he had a specialized program and individual tutor.
I think it is a mark of great respect by the royal family for the academic integrity of both Oxford and Cambridge and an admission how the landscape of education in the UK has changed that none of them appear have sought admission to either in the many decades since prince Charles went to Cambridge.