When you're applying for a US residency as an FMG, the reputation of your foreign medical school can help, however, this influence diminishes when you apply to more competitive residency programs. It's impossible and uninformed to make a generalized statement such as RCSI is known in top institutions in the US and program directors are more inclined to take applicants from RCSI over another Irish or other foreign medical schools without mentioning that this is highly dependent on what speciality you're applying to and, more importantly, the quality of your application. It may be true that RCSI has a strong reputation in certain select institutions in the US like Mayo, Harvard, Cleveland Clinic, etc., for programs such as general surgery and internal medicine, but the influence dwindles for ultra-competitive specialities such as ophthalmology, ent, dermatology, plastic surgery, etc. In fact, FMGs match into these ultra-competitive programs from international medical schools with far less of a reputation compared to the Irish medical schools which is a testiment to the fact that the applicant's individual acheivements is what is most important. Also, I doubt that RCSI has that much more of a superior reputation in the US compared to Trinity College. Don't forget that alumni from TCD also travel to the US for fellowships and have connections, and if we are comparing name recognition, although 'Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland' is a catchy title, Trinity is a world renowned multi-faculty institution and that has the capability to make more of an impact for you. For instance, Oxford could possibly have a poor medical school, I don't know, but then again, everybody knows Oxford. And another thing, when I speak to people at school about electives, everybody wants to go to Harvard, Hopkins, Mayo, and the other big names, but remember, this doesn't necessarily mean that they have the best programs. Some programs are better for clinical experience (or in surgery, operative experience), while others provide a better forum for publishing if one wishes to go into academic practise. The previous poster took great pride in listing some big name institutions where he interviewed such as Hopkins, Georgetown, and Tufts, but remember, athough these programs are considered strong, they are not necessarily the best programs in the US. Most of the University-based programs in the US are strong, however there are a propensity of great programs in the southern US where RCSI is practically unknown, for example, Emory, Vanderbilt, UTSW, Baylor, etc., also, the mid-west like Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, and the west coast programs in California. In my humble opinion, if you go to RCSI or Trinity or any of the other Irish medical schools, your opportunity will depend on your performance much more than it will depend on your school's name.
For albinolion, when you say that you have 'long experience' and that you 'have finished training' and have 'worked as a surgeon for 2 years', by this do you mean that you graduated from medical school in 2003 and have worked as an intern for a year (6 months medicine/6 months surgery) and a senior house officer for another year in Ireland?
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