yep great answers by the above poster.
i am a 4th year SGU student currently applying to residencies. you'll have a much harder time getting a residency as a carib student than as a US student, even DO's have an easier time getting residencies, however, if you're canadian then the DO thing might not be an option.
like said above SGU is the oldest and most recognized caribbean school that caters to US and Candian students. So if you plan on going to the carib this is your best option, and name recognition means a lot.
There's no catch as long as you pass your classes and do well on your USMLE's you'll graduate and most likely match into some residency somewhere in the US, it might not be in the specialty that you want but at least you'll be a licensed doctor.
You will have to study many hours a day regardless of getting a good residency or not. medical school is hard and requires students to study many hours every day, if you don't have a great memory or are a slow reader then you might have to study 12 hours a day or even more. No one knows what will happen with residency placement, every year its getting harder and harder for foreign grads to get residencies in the US, this is because the number or residencies is staying about the same and the number of US grads is growing at a very fast rate, so in 4 or 5 years no one knows what will happen, it could easily be that the only residency you might be able to get is family medicine, internal medicine or pediatrics. don't count on going to SGU and becoming an ENT, dermatologist, Neurosurgeon, Orthopedic surgeon, Ophthamologist, Urologist, and it will be very very hard to become a radiologist, other specialties will also be hard but the ones listed first are almost impossible. So no one knows what will happen in 5 years but it will get much harder before it gets easier, and it's pretty hard to get a residency already.
It's almost impossible to get a residency in Canada because mainly in Canada the number of Canadian medical grads pretty much equals the number of Canadian residencies. there might be a few hundred left over, you'll be competeing with thousands of people for those couple of hundred residency spots. As for European Countries, there are a few SGU grads all over the world but they were probably citizens of those countries before getting their MD at SGU. from what I hear it's even harder to get a residency in Europe than in the US if you're a citizen of one of those countries. So don't count on being able to work in other countries besides the US.
if you're a canadian it's not a problem to get an education visa and do your rotations in the US however, getting a residency is a different story, and it will be considerably harder to get a residency when compared to a US citizen from SGU.
like stated above you spend your first 2 years (basic science years) in the carbibbean, but there are now other programs where you can spend part of that time in England.
for more info and to talk to more SGU students go to
www.valuemd.com and look through the SGU forum.
Because you're a candian SGU might be the best option for you. if you were a US citizen then i would say apply to DO schools before going down the caribbean, if you got into SGU you should be able to get into a DO school and will have a much better chance of getting a residency after graduating.
