Our front door is not a perma-ban. You can reapply to your satisfaction, and retake MCAT to your satisfaction.
You are allowed to take the MCAT 3 times and then you have to apply for special permission to retake the MCAT. And with each subsequent attempt, your chances of being accepted to medical school dwindle. Many programs will not interview a candidate if they see a candidate has taken the MCAT more than 3 times.
A significant number of each year's entry class are re-applicants. Ever heard of post-bac programs, masters programs, PhD?
Have you ever listened to what those re-applicants had to go through? Many of them are required to post MCAT scores higher than the mean of the school in addition to succeeding in their respective graduate programs which is not easy. And even with all that done, there is no guaranteee they will be accepted to a U.S. medical school. There are many Caribbean applicants that underwent these programs and were still forced to going the IMG route. The system in other countries favor reapplicants because their slate is essentially wiped clean if they score high enough on the national exams the following year. It would be rather nice if a repplicant was told that he or she was guaranteed a spot if he simply reached a score on the MCAT. No medical school will promise that.
I have friends who are in med school now got in after his 4th try with their undergrad 2.7's but have went on to many wonderful things like peace corps, missionary work, EMT work and masters culminating in a med school acceptance.
I also know someone who has applied 6 years in a row and has not gotten in. They also did wonderful things like performing additional graduate and volunteer work. Contrary to what you believe, it isn't a formula. There is no guarantee you will get into a U.S. school even with a 36 MCAT if your GPA is subpar. No school will make such a promise.
How is that different from re-applicants shooting for, and ended up getting into 2nd/3rd tier US schools?
The schools I'm referring to are 2nd and 3rd tier medical schools. I'm not referring to Duke and Harvard. You think it's a given that you will get into those schools which it's not. And unless you move to Mississippi, buy a house, live and work there for several years, you won't achieve residency status. States are not falling for the "live there for a year and apply for a drivers' license bit" any longer. State medical schools are insistent on protecting its true residents so they set their own criteria as to what defines residency which can differ significantly from the state's general standard.
SOme states are harder than others, that's why taking a look at many of the 2nd and 3rd tier private med schools in other states (and even some 1st tiers) you will see the qualified California refugees.
That is a misconception. Many amazing candidates use these 2nd and 3rd tier medical schools as their safety schools. These schools might lack the prestige associated with their Cleveland Clinic and Hopkins counterparts but they are still located in large metropolitan cities. So for many strong applicants, they would rather attend Boston U. than going back home to Iowa. Case in point, Loyola University is considered a second tier private medical school however, it's Chicago location makes it very competitive. Boston University is the same way.
In general, American medical schools are already quite easy to get in (last years AAMC stats show 50+% of applicants get in) compare to the rest of the first world in terms of acceptance rate, that yea... if you didn't get in once, you may be unlucky, but if you try 5 times and still can't get in any US med school, there is probably more than one thing that's wrong that perhaps it's the fate's way of letting you know you shouldn't be a doctor.
That information is misleading because undergraduate schools in the United States weed out applicants before they are in a position to apply. Therefore, the people who make it to the application stage in the United States are fairly reputable candidates to begin with. In foreign countries, there is no weeding out process. Far more people will apply before taking their national exams. The ones who score high enough are accepted to those schools. Imagine if U.S. students could apply to medical school directly out of high school. Now imagine if their acceptance was based solely on their SAT score. If that were the case, the percent accepted would be significantly less than 50% since so many more students would have applied. That is essentially what medical schools admissions are like in foreign countries.
In India, the screening door is at the board/licensure exam step, not the med school entry step. You go to one of those schools with open door policy, statistically you have something like 30% chance of making it to graduation, and if you actually graduated, if you want to practice in India you have a high rate of exam failure.
That is not true at all. I don't know where you are getting your information. Getting admission to these schools in India is challenging. There is no open door policy unless you are referring to one of the private schools but those operate like Caribbean schools so there is no pyramid scheme.
"Work harder" is a difficult term in this case. Many off shore medical schools teach with the sole purpose of test prep. Many US schools teach to their curriculum, not with this sole purpose.
U.S. schools also have M.D.'s teaching several of their courses. M.D. professors are known to abridge material and teach practical information for clinicals and the boards since they are physicians themselves. Off-shore schools hire foreign PhD's who are unfamiliar with the North American system so it can be a challenge to learn from one of these professors. Many offshore schools do not offer perks associated with U.S. medical schools like lecture notes, student note systems and PBL group learning. Many of the offshore schools require you to read textbooks and take notes in class the old fashioned way. Many U.S. schools are pass/fail so the nature of the class isn't as cutthroat as the environment in offshore schools. Even the Honors/Pass/ Fail schools break students down into thirds as opposed to reporting an exact class rank which further protects U.S. students from scrutiny. And then let's discuss volume. Would you rather compete with 300 students gunning for the same goal or 100 students? Yes, many of these 300 students are not strong students but a significant portion of them are. I can imagine at least 200 of those students are serious. Then there is the challenge of studying in a foreign country. How would you like it if you had to endure power outages for hours at time. It's much easier studying in an air-conditioned apartment with no threat of power outages, petty crime or hurricanes in addition to having access to standard U.S. amenities.
Some schools, including many of the top schools, have research requirements built into their first 2 years at the expense of their basic science teaching (ie. at Duke medical school students spend 1 year of basic since and 1 year research.)
The key is "some" schools and research also offers significant down-time in which students can plan their schedule however they wish. I have done enough research in my time to know that I can study while I wait hours to prepare items. I have two family members that are M.D./Ph.D's so I'm quite familiar with what is entailed in research. Yes, it requires a lot of work but it also offers enough flexibility for one to study should he or she prioritize. In many ways it is easier than having to attend class at a fixed schedule. And since you mentioned schools with research requirements, what about the notoriously easy U.S. medical schools like Brown and Stanford. There are several U.S. medical schools like this that offer high grade inflation and very loose standards. Those schools are difficult to get into but once you are in, they are known for being lax.
Just because you score higher on USMLE doesn't mean you worked harder, because the time you spent memorizing First Aid for USMLE Step 1 is the time someone else is doing research, community services, or authoring an abstract.
There are plenty of students that do research and community service and still succeed on scoring well on the USMLE. Research and community service should not be excuses as to why one failed to score high on Step I. And even if that was the case, shouldn't the student be penalized for not prioritizing? After all, we are more than happy to penalize and undergrad that didn study enough for the MCAT. The undergraduate could claim that he or she was busy with research and community service. So it's okay if a U.S. graduate scored poorly on Step I because he was busy doing research and community service, but it's okay to penalize a U.S. undergraduate for not studying enough for the MCAT despite he or she having other responsibilities? It seems like a double standard to me.
That's why reglardless of specialty, step 1 is not the only thing PD's look at for a good reason.
I never claimed it was the only thing they looked at. But there is a reason why the top programs set cutoffs on Step I scores and why it's generally regarded to be the most important element in your application above even grades and AOA since those criteria are subjective and dependent upon the medical school one attends.
In addition, I am just trying to make the argument that American grads have a more consistent, uniform training on their clinical ward services on 3rd/4th yr med school, which is considered the biggest equalizer across all
US med schools.
What about the IMG's who train in the United States during the 3rd and 4th years alongside U.S. students? So the U.S. students who are doing rotations alongside them are receiving proper training but the IMG's are not for whatever reason?
You cannot same the same uniformly with foreign grads, where everyone trained at different places of uncertain quality.
Traveling during rotations is not limited to IMG's. Plenty of U.S. students elect to travel to different hospitals for rotations. And a lack of uniformity in no way translates to poor training. What does it matter if an IMG does his IM rotation in NYC and his Peds rotation in a different hospital in NYC. They are both hospitals in the United States. You are just making an assumption that it is poor because they are traveling.
Most FMG's and PDs focus on step 1 because that's the only common data point in common.
But like the MCAT, PD's also know Step I is test of discipline. You may claim that anyone can just memorize a FIRST AID but why do so many of fail to do that then? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it is extremely challenging to devote so many hours to prepare for it. It requires certain fortitude for one to prepare for that exam in addition to providing themselves with critical thinking skills and the ability to apply medicine in a variety of ways. Step I is not a spelling bee, it requires more than memorization.
