I'd advise you to figure out your test taking difficulty before entering a very expensive and risky situation. Your MCAT scores and lack of improvement show that you have a major deficit in either studying, applying your knowledge, or strategy on MC exams. Since every exam in med school and residency is MC, it's extremely likely that you'd fail one or more exams. Failing Step 1 at a Caribbean school would mean your residency application would be DOA 2 years before you would even graduate. You'd likely be saddled with hundreds of thousands in student debt with no way to continue your career.
So I only need one of those two things?
ya you can be dead and as long as your checking account is active they'll take you.
ya that's why I said it
I just want to reiterate trying to figure out where you went wrong with the MCAT before diving into any medical school, let alone one in the Carribean. Though I have seen plenty of instances of low MCAT, high step, since becoming an IMG brings an added layer of "risk", I would try to work on that inconsistency.
lol
Fixed that for you
Finished Term 5 and in dedicated step now. I must say, you're spot on. When I started at SGU almost 2 years ago, I knew they were pretty money hungry and accepted a good chunk of students that should not be there, which they ultimately repeated a few terms and left, or dropped out/kicked out. Over the 2 years, I've seen how the school is really business oriented and they don't exactly care about the students too much. It's really a ride or die type of place and its sad to see some amazing people get kicked out with nothing but a 100,000$+ bill. With the new April class, even more students that are not ready/should not be admitted, will ultimately be admitted. The school is basically trying to accept a few hundred more in order to make up for the few hundred that end up dropping out. The school truly needs to start investing more into the students- better teachers, strengthen their curriculum, improve their organization and communication.
lol the disillusioned pre-meds that read this are gonna be like what a hater! It cant be that way!
i dont think anyone is disagreeing with you
But that's the point. They shouldn't be accepting so many lower tier students. It's predatory. Obviously there are people like you who can achieve in a low resource environment, but that doesn't justify the exorbitant costs, risk to students, and lack of oversight of the school in general.
57% match rate last year. Huge financial risk to take.
And for the half that match, you are absolutely correct. For the other half, not so much!! In fact, they might even legitimately feel they were scammed.
And a good 10% or so go on to match after re-applying the next cycle. You are right.... I am sure the people who skate by doing poorly with a 20th percentile step score are upset. I would say 60% chance are pretty good odds considering the population of students...
If that is your level best you don’t have what it takes to reliably get through to residency. I’m sorry, there are plenty of other meaningful careers
So here's the situation you're advocating for: You want people who have a history of academic difficulty to move to a remote island with limited resources and limited academic guidance. They take out non-dischargeable loans paying some of the highest rates of tuition and living expenses. Half of them fail out before they get to Step 1. Then, assuming they survive a haphazard assembly of clinical rotations all over the country AND score a decent step 2, they only have a 60% chance of matching into a residency in, almost exclusively, IM or primary care.
And that's exactly what I was talking about when I said they hadn't resolved their academic issues. There's no bar they have to meet to prove they have what it takes. There's no requirement or limit on getting graduate loans approved. The average MCAT of SGU is like 498 which is far below what a future doctor should be scoring.
If you want to know whether you'll get accepted or not, you'll most likely get straight acceptance with/without AEP.
Predatory and fair are polar opposites. While medical education in the US has its problems, they're not the ones who opened the unlimited tap of federal student loans and drove up the price of all secondary education. Further, for-profit education systems are almost universally substandard to non-profit systems of education (DeVry, Everest, TrumpU, PragerU, etc.) It should not be legal to operate a for-profit system using taxpayer dollars to fuel their bottom line.
Wow, not sure how you made that association. That guy was a result of extremely poor background checking and apparently no oversight whatsoever at his residency. There's never been any report of his step scores which were at least 18 years ago. Even if any of this was associated, you're using the anecdote of a single psychotic physician as proof that the entire system is broken.
No, you misunderstood. I'm blaming the school for taking advantage of a broken loan system and fueling their bottom line with taxpayer dollars. My position is that if you're truly improved, you can actually spend less money by doing an unofficial or official post-bacc and getting into a US MD/DO school. You're basically advocating that the 70% of people dumping their money for nothing are funding your ability to get what you want.
MCAT and Step 1 have a 0.72 correlation coefficient per a 2019 study. There is no standardized test that's a perfect predictor of anything since people have different strengths and change over time. Multivariable analysis of factors associated with USMLE scores across U.S. medical schools
I have no issue with IMG docs because I assume they know what they're doing. I'm arguing that their path to medicine is predatory and those who support it are doing so on the backs of a majority of people who do not make it through but whose taxpayer funded loans are used to pad their bottom lines.
Yes I would. The took a long shot at a school preying on people who need a long shot. That doesn’t mean grads are dumb, it means matriculants took a huge risk I wouldn’t recommend
If by legitimate you mean legitimately as high a chance of never getting a residency after $300k as getting one, then yes. Legitimate chance
