Decision Advice?

[Vspy]

Hi everyone,

I have been going back and forth between accepting the Caribbean or Australia for the last little while, so hopefully other people on here can shed some insights?

Just a disclaimer, I have done my research and spent countless hours reading about how hard it is to come back to NA. I know that I should try everything (e.g. multiple rounds of apps, DO, Grad school, etc.) before going overseas, and I have.

I never really considered Caribbean previously, but thinking more about it, there are some pros:
- The last 2 years being able to do rotations in the US is a big plus in terms of residency matching.
- Sizeable amount of money for the Global Scholar program.
- 1st year spent in the UK

Pros for Aus:
- Its Australia...enough said lol
- More reputable
- Possibility of doing internship there if for some reason I can't/don't want to match back in NA

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[kittyhello1234]

Aus.
Don't go to SGU it's not a good school...40+% of the students get washed out in 4 years.

 

[Skip Intro]

- Sizeable amount of money for the Global Scholar program.
- 1st year spent in the UK

"It is designed for students who want to practice medicine in the developing world."

http://www.sgu.edu/news-events/news-archives07-UNN-launch.html

Is that your goal?

-Skip

 

[UBC2014]

If you're going to go to SGU, don't bother with the program that you do some preclin in the UK. There is absolutely no benefit to it, other than not being in Grenada.

I personally would take SGU, simply because it has the 2 years of US clinicals.

Or pick whatever is cheaper. Aussie has no real benefits over SGU. Reputations is irrelevant, and the backup of doing internship isn't very reliable anyways - and that would also mean staying in aussi.

 

[bedevilled ben]

Aus.
Don't go to SGU it's not a good school...40+% of the students get washed out in 4 years.

[citation needed]

Unless things have changed dramatically in the 2 years since I left the island, SGU's attrition is nowhere near 40+%.

If you're going to go to SGU, don't bother with the program that you do some preclin in the UK. There is absolutely no benefit to it, other than not being in Grenada.

Mostly agreed. KBT is fine if you have somebody else paying for your tuition, there is no additional teaching that goes and the professors are the same as Grenada. I have a lot of friends that did it and they all knew each other much better and stayed close. It's much less of a culture shock than going to Grenada, and there are many many more opportunities in Newcastle for weekend/holiday traveling and more ways to forget about medical school for a couple of hours. It is expensive though, and you miss out on some of the experience of living in Grenada for MS1 and MS2.

If your final goal is to practice in the US, then your metric needs to be [probability of success in program] x [NRMP placement rate].

 

[kittyhello1234]

Take your freshmen "incoming" class. By the time we finish M2, 25+% have been washed out.
The other 15+% can be infered by the match results of SGU.

 

[bedevilled ben]

Take your freshmen "incoming" class. By the time we finish M2, 25+% have been washed out.
The other 15+% can be infered by the match results of SGU.

Match rate and attrition rate are completely separate parameters, don't conflate them. A good 10-15% of my graduating class didn't participate in the NRMP this past cycle, but that doesn't mean they didn't graduate. The US isn't the only place SGU graduates seek practice. Rolling admissions with hugely different class sizes between August/January, and decel'ing a class further complicates the numbers. I'm not trying to minimize the fact that SGU has a significantly higher attrition rate than US schools, I've discussed it previously in many posts, but over-exaggerating it is just as disingenuous. It's complicated and not easy to pin down.

 

[kittyhello1234]

Where did you get that 10-15% just wondering? I don't disagree with you that 40+% don't match is a very rough estimate based on SGU published data. But I would be interested in knowing that 10-15% data and how much of those people match over seas?
btw congrats on matching!

 

[bedevilled ben]

Where did you get that 10-15% just wondering? I don't disagree with you that 40+% don't match is a very rough estimate based on SGU published data. But I would be interested in knowing that 10-15% data and how much of those people match over seas?

The office of career guidance tracks all of this data and so much more by collecting class surveys and uploaded rank order lists before graduation, and combining that with the NRMP outcome stats. It's presented to students at the end of 3rd year when you are preparing your application.

I didn't say that 40+% don't match. SGU's match rate for first-choice specialty was something like 70% for IMGs and 60% for FMGs based on the last "charting the outcomes" match data from 2013. But for the purposes of the NRMP, matching into a specialty different from your #1 program is considered "not matched". So if you rank Ob/Gyn as your #1 and end up matching into your #6 IM program, that's considered "not matched" in this data set. A lot of students apply to backup programs to ensure they match and have a job after graduation, so there is a quite large number that successfully obtain a residency despite being considered "unmatched" according to the NRMP. These numbers are higher now, according to the OCG. I don't have charts or graphs or raw numbers to give you, I'm afraid. Per the data presented by OCG as of last year, the overall match rate for SGU was like 90%. Take with a grain of salt.

About 35% of my class are non-US citizens, a non-trivial portion of that 35% return to their home countries to practice. What number? I have no idea.

Attrition rate is something entirely different, and refers to the number of students lost prior to graduation, and has nothing to do with Matching. As I mentioned above, these numbers aren't published by the school meaning we have to estimate them. It's tough to do when there are two classes usually of wildly different size and students can decel into the following class. It makes estimating the actual attrition rate difficult. I've guesstimated 15-20% over all 4 years for my class just based on the number fluctuations from term to term, and class totals for various milestones like Step 1, Step 2, graduation, etc. The majority of those seem to be lost in Term 1 due to med-school shock, and Term 4 to class difficulty/Step washout.

I suppose if you wanted to consider your cumulative probability as 1) an entering MS1 student 2) as a US-citizen of 3) graduating successfully 4) with zero delays 5) Matching into the US 6) in your first-choice specialty, that total probability would be something like 50-60%. Given the broad, uh "quality" of SGU's entering classes, I'm not sure how useful this statistic really is, though.

All of these questions would be clearly answered if the schools would just be more transparent and release the numbers themselves. Don't hold your breath, though.

btw congrats on matching!

Thank you!