How hard is it to transfer from Caribbean to U.S. schools?

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

Shoushu

Full Member
10+ Year Member
Joined
Jan 24, 2010
Messages
239
Reaction score
0
How hard is it to transfer from Caribbean to U.S. schools?

For ex, a U.S. citizen arrives in Caribbean, have 3.7 to 4.0 GPA for a year or two, and ace USMLE Step 1. Is there good chance to transfer to low-ranked U.S. school? I know most US schools rarely have open spots for transfer students. But are there ones likely to accept A students from caribbean?

Members don't see this ad.
 
It has happened in the past and happens every term. You have the highest chance of transferring to a school that you were waitlisted at. And you have to keep a check on when a slot opens. So even though the likelihood is like 0.5%, it can happen and almost always happens after basics.
 
There are a few schools known for taking Caribbean transfers. Like you said though, being an "A" student and ace'ing your step are the prereqs and will not in any shape or form guarantee you acceptance.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
Do not bet on it I know two who transferred in american med schools low end but amg. STEP ONE SCORE 99/ 264, from their home states they where waitlisted at in previous years.
 
May I ask why one would want to transfer after beginning at SGU? I have worked with a number of amazing doctors who earned their education at SGU.

Would transferring to an American med school help with competitive residencies or something? The doctors I know who studied off-shore work in many different specialties, such as ER and surgery. From what I've read, the education and support at SGU is excellent.

Thanks.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
May I ask why one would want to transfer after beginning at SGU? I have worked with a number of amazing doctors who earned their education at SGU.

Would transferring to an American med school help with competitive residencies or something? The doctors I know who studied off-shore work in many different specialties, such as ER and surgery. From what I've read, the education and support at SGU is excellent.

Thanks.

It would help greatly with competitive residencies.

Match list for SGU into the super competitive residencies is not very good. (same goes for all Caribbean schools)

Compare their match list with any low tier US allopathic school.
 
I transferred to an LCME school and wrote up the entire process here:

caribbeantransfer.blogspot.com

Transferring will open up many doors.
 
I've been accepted to a caribbean school but still keeping a positive outlook on the US schools I applied to. SGU gives 30 days to confirm enrollment/reserve a seat which I did after submitting $1000. I did this to have at least one option in the end. Does anyone know or has anyone withdrawn their seat at a Caribbean school after reserving a seat to go to a US school when accepted? Both school start in August, and I don't mind losing the $1000 though its a lot of money to go to a US school. Any help is much appreciated.
 
Most Caribbean students end up doing their third and fourth year rotations at U.S. medical schools anyway, so in the end, it doesn't really matter.

If you weren't smart enough to take your prereqs, MCAT, and ECs seriously in undergrad, you most definitely do not deserve to "trade up" in medical school. (...Unless you have extenuating spousal/family circumstances that necessitate a move. The only decent medical school I know of that CONSIDERS medical school transfers is UChicago.)
 
I knew one or two SGU students who managed to transfer to a US school, but they were among the top students in the class. Transferring can be done, but its very difficult. Your credentials have to be stellar.
 
Most Caribbean students end up doing their third and fourth year rotations at U.S. medical schools anyway, so in the end, it doesn't really matter.

I hate to say it but this statement is incorrect. Doing clinical rotations in the US as a caribbean grad and transferring to a US medical school to complete clinical training are two totally different things. Being a US grad puts anyone at a huge advantage in the match.
 
Most Caribbean students end up doing their third and fourth year rotations at U.S. medical schools anyway, so in the end, it doesn't really matter.

If you weren't smart enough to take your prereqs, MCAT, and ECs seriously in undergrad, you most definitely do not deserve to "trade up" in medical school. (...Unless you have extenuating spousal/family circumstances that necessitate a move. The only decent medical school I know of that CONSIDERS medical school transfers is UChicago.)

Wow. Way wrong. Many/most competitive residencies are not looking at Caribbean grads, regardless of USMLE score. Future dermatologist? Impossible from the Caribbean (nearly impossible for US grads). In the next 5-7 years, all residency slots will be drying up for Caribbean grads, even pediatrics in BFE.
 
I feel like I need to give you a more realistic response here.

Although I agree with the above posts, transferring to a US school is not something you should expect at all, even from SGU. a few students per year out of 4,839 total students.

I'm not saying it's not worth a shot, but just understand that the odds are less than the 0.5% that was mentioned earlier.
 
There are 1 or 2 students who are able to transfer into an American school from AUC each semester - but usually they are students with good connections & ridiculously high Step 1 scores. For the vast majority of students (even those with high Step I scores), this is not even an option.

If going to a US school is your ultimate goal, you would be much better off working on your GPA and MCAT & getting accepted in the states.

You can also go the DO route.
 
There are multiple Caribbean med students applying for transfers to a limited number of positions.
They all have high gpa's & step I scores (>255 usually in the 260+)

There are only a few schools that will let you transfer. Drexel, neucom and maybe 2-3 more. The number of spots vary each year because it depends on the number of students that either take a leave of absence, drop out, fail etc.
Usually it's about 1-2 spots but they can often have none.

I'm guessing each year there are a max of 6-10 spots. There have been some years where it was 0-2.

You could always think about reapplying and starting from scratch. I don't know if that is a viable option for you.

The benefits of transferring are huge. The fact that you are an AMG helps tremendously with competitive residency applications. These students already have the Step I scores and GPA.

I'm not sure if the additional debt or time is worth it, or if you will even be considered, having taken your step I already.
 
Wow. Way wrong. Many/most competitive residencies are not looking at Caribbean grads, regardless of USMLE score. Future dermatologist? Impossible from the Caribbean (nearly impossible for US grads). In the next 5-7 years, all residency slots will be drying up for Caribbean grads, even pediatrics in BFE.

Really? Why is this always the counter-argument? MOST U.S. medical grads, as you state, don't have the credentials to get into Dermatology residency. And, I would question what you're really "in it" for if this is your primary aspiration for going into medicine in the first place.

Just my $0.02.

-Skip
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
How hard is it to transfer from Caribbean to U.S. schools?

For ex, a U.S. citizen arrives in Caribbean, have 3.7 to 4.0 GPA for a year or two, and ace USMLE Step 1. Is there good chance to transfer to low-ranked U.S. school? I know most US schools rarely have open spots for transfer students. But are there ones likely to accept A students from caribbean?

I wrote this post about 7 years ago. I'm sure it still applies today. Hope this helps.

A little bit about my background:
great undergrad institution: UC Berkeley
not so great overall GPA: 3.19
an even lower science GPA: 2.875
MCAT 30

I DID NOT apply to US schools because I did not think I was competitive enough and I did not want to wait around for a year when I knew I was ready to start studying medicine. I applied directly to SGU while in college and matriculated 1 month after I graduated. This is a decision I do not regret since I was highly motivated at that time and in addition, when I have an idea in my head and it turns into a goal (like medical school) I push through with full force until it is complete. To me “goals are obtainable.”
I know everyone has a different path to take to get into med school and I respect that....I just can't sit around and wait for things to happen.

First, I always had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to give transferring a shot and I knew that having good grades in medical school and a high step 1 score would def. give me the best shot of doing just that. I went down to SGU not with the mentality that I was going to transfer; I went down there knowing that in order for me to have a chance at attaining a decent residency I would have to crush my boards. If in the end I got to transfer and graduate from a US school than that would be awesome. When I finally decided to pursue a career in surgery, this changed things for me and it became even more important for me to become competitive during the match and thus to transfer and graduate from a US medical school.

I tried to get as many A's as possible as well as tried my best to get involved. I ended up teaching 2 DES classes: physiology and biochemistry while down there. I taught the classes only part time with a friend so it really didn't take too much time. I enjoyed teaching and it was something I could write about in my personal statement and put on my CV. Other than that, I studied hard EVERYDAY mostly skipping lecture and just reading the syllabus on my own. I partied hard after exams, explored the other islands and had a great time on the beaches and my overall experience on the islands was fantastic.

When 2nd year came, I started asking for LORs. I had established a good relationship with one of the anatomy professors by chance actually (we were stranded on one of the neighboring islands together b/c we both missed our flights to come back to Grenada, enabling us to spend several hours to talk about nothing). I had done well in anatomy and got a great letter from him.
For my second LOR, I asked one of the pathophysiology professors at St. Vincent’s who I did not know so well but I still ended up getting a great letter from him.

I asked for letters early since I knew it would be extremely difficult to get them once I left the islands and was back in the United States. I had all the letters (including a dean's letter-which at SGU is a generic letter printed out by the secretary using your class rank and a premade template) sent to my undergrads mail service so I could store them and send them out to whatever schools I was planning to apply to in the future.

Now, you can transfer in 2 different ways:

After 1st year: you complete all the first year classes and apply without a USMLE step 1 score and enter the 2nd year (much more limited to find open spots) can happen, but I didn't bother with it. I was in the groove of studying, doing well at SGU and wanted to get a high step 1 score before I attempted to transfer.

After 2nd year: this is what I did, I did well in the two years I spent in Grenada and St. Vincent, I didn't have a 4.0 but I was close with a 3.83. I've seen people transfer with as low of a 3.5 or 3.3 but I figured I would just study my butt off and give myself the best possible shot.

A note about board scores, I have heard of an extremely wide variation in board scores of those who have transferred to a US school. Of course most of the USMLE step 1 score were pretty high (I got a 240/97).

And the rest in my class who transferred were all up there, of those who I know who transferred to any US medical school over the past few years

213(Ross) --> yes, 213!
218 (Europe)
226 (SGU)
230(ross)
260(ross)
240(SGU)
248(SGU)
256(SGU)
242 (SGU)
236 (SGU)

As you can see the there is wide variation with most scores being very competitive. I know for a fact there isn't any one score that can get you in, and I have heard of people with even higher scores or similar scores not even getting an interview because there were not enough spots available that year.

Next: what schools to apply to? I actually took my time and contacted every single LCME accredited school (either by website, email, phone) to determine whether the school: Yes, I called/emailed/wrote/looked up the website for every single of the 125 medical schools in the United States including Puerto Rico. It took a long time and was very tedious. I bought one of those Princeton guides on all the medical schools in the US and used it as my bible for information for school contacts/websites/etc… These are the things I asked each school whether or not they:
1. accepted foreign medical students as a transfer
2. And if they anticipated having spots for 2nd or 3rd year

Some places fit the above criteria but they required you to be a resident of that state and being a California resident, I quickly crossed those schools off my list.

Now at this point, I didn't know if I was really willing to do 2nd year over. But I just wanted to know all my options and I'd figure out later what I would finally decide to do.

I ended up finding about 12 schools that accepts transfer students from WHO accredited foreign medical schools into either 2nd or 3rd year.
I followed up with 6 schools which told me they might have a possibility of anticipating spots for the next year. Now that I think about it, there was one school that told me that they had no spots (NYmed) and later that year I found out that a buddy of mine was able to transfer there. What I think happened is that despite the fact that the school said they didn't anticipate any spots he still put in his application. When a spot opened up, his was one of the few applications in the pile and he got in!

Off the top of my head (granted policies might have changed) schools that accept foreign students regardless of state residency:

Dartmouth
Columbia
UMDNJ Robert wood Johnson
Drexel
temple
Tulane
suny upstate syracuse
suny upstate stonybrook
NEOUCOM
George Washington
NY med
University of Virginia

I ended up applying to Drexel, temple, Tulane, suny syracuse, NEOUCOM, and GW. Even though Univ. of Virginia had spots I decided against applying there because they wanted 7 letters of rec. 3 from undergrad, 3 from med school, 1 med school dean’s letter. AND, they would only let you transfer into the 2nd year meaning I would have to repeat a year. I didn’t have enough LORs and I didn’t want to repeat a year if I didn’t have to so I didn’t bother applying.

oh yes, the requirements for 3rd year transfer:
1. you need an mcat score (so if you went to a Caribbean school that doesn’t require an mcat score-sorry bud, and they actually want to see a decent mcat score because they don't want to drop the stats of the school)
2. Fulfill all the 1st year med pre-requisites of the medical school (ochem, gchem, bio...etc.)
3. Med school courses
4. USMLE step1
5. LORs: 2 med school LORs, 1 med school dean’s letter, 2 undergrad LORs
6. US citizen or Permanent residents
7. application fees were about 50-100 bucks per application.
8. personal statement

I heard back and was invited for interview at 3/6 schools I had applied to.
GW, Drexel, and NEOUCOM.

Check this out, the year I applied there were a ton of transfer spots. Drexel had 11. NEOUCOM had, get this: a whopping 22 spots and they gave out like 24 interviews so getting the interview (which cost 650 dollars to attend a 3 day interview) was basically like getting into the school. To this day, I have never heard of anything as ridiculous as that and even this current year they anticipate only 2 spots into the M3 year for transfer.

To make a long story short, I ended up hearing from Drexel about a week after I interviewed and the rest is history. I spent about 2000 + dollars on the entire transfer application process, this including in airfare, application fees, and hotels and it was worth every penny.

I was fortunate enough to start at SGU right after I graduated undergrad and did not have to repeat any of my medical school career....but I did not plan it out this way, I seriously just went down to SGU willing to give it the best shot as I possibly could and things just worked out. I would have been completely happy with a degree from St. George's and have made some of my closest friends down there in Grenada. I've always been thankful to SGU for giving me a chance to become a doctor and my loyalty has always been towards SGU. I will forever be partial to Both Drexel and SGU for allowing me to receive my medical degree.

I hoped this helped all of you starting down in Grenada or any Caribbean medical school who are thinking about transferring. It’s difficult but not impossible by any means. Think about this, you'll never know if you don't apply. And there are a lot of competitive applicants that weed themselves out by not even throwing in an application.

Final words: let’s take one school SGU: if there are 250 per semester and let’s say that 50 have grades competitive enough to transfer and only about 20 apply. Double the 250 b/c of 2 semesters of incoming classes and you have about 40 people from SGU applying for transfer any one year.

If all the schools I listed took 1-2 each per year (maybe more), that’s about 10-15 spots available that 40 St. George's and maybe another 20 from Ross are applying for.

10-15 for 60 people aren't that bad odds. Its def. not the 5% that’s quoted on the SGU website that takes into account all the students who don't even attempt to transfer. If you have any further questions please feel free to contact me, I would love to help out.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 users
Nice post.

I graduated from Ross. I didn't jump through all those hoops, despite being as motivated as yourself. Nonetheless, I'm now a board-certified anesthesiologist in private practice working between 35-40 hours per week and making close to $400,000 a year.

Whatever you have to do to get there, just get there.

-Skip
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
Nice post.

I graduated from Ross. I didn't jump through all those hoops, despite being as motivated as yourself. Nonetheless, I'm now a board-certified anesthesiologist in private practice working between 35-40 hours per week and making close to $400,000 a year.

Whatever you have to do to get there, just get there.

-Skip

Thanks SKIP.....yea I know you've been around SDN for sometime and you are probably the same year as me or close to it. But I think you got your head on straight and nailed it right on the head. There is a light at the end of the tunnel and you just have to get there.:thumbup:
 
Hi i want to apply to medical school to Ross and st. George but i heard that its hard to get in residency placement . i ma CA residence i want to do my residency here it will be possible if i go to schools in Caribbean?

Nice post.
I graduated from Ross. I didn't jump through all those hoops, despite being as motivated as yourself. Nonetheless, I'm now a board-certified anesthesiologist in private practice working between 35-40 hours per week and making close to $400,000 a year.

Whatever you have to do to get there, just get there.

-Skip
 
Hi i want to apply to medical school to Ross and st. George but i heard that its hard to get in residency placement . i ma CA residence i want to do my residency here it will be possible if i go to schools in Caribbean?

It is possible, but will be difficult.
 
Hi i want to apply to medical school to Ross and st. George but i heard that its hard to get in residency placement . i ma CA residence i want to do my residency here it will be possible if i go to schools in Caribbean?

If you work hard and do well, you have a chance. Don't expect a competitive residency, but Family Practice and Internal Medicine in a possibly less-than-desirable location should be do-able. Make good connections during your core and elective rotations, get good LORs for residency, and apply widely.

I applied to over 30 anesthesiology programs, got interviews at 14, ranked 11, and matched into my #2 choice. This was in 2004-2005.

Good luck.

-Skip
 
Top