I am Carribean Medical Student who finished Basic Sciences

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arindian470 said:
I want to add that just because you are from the Caribbean doesn't mean that it's the end of the world if you do get through the process you have a pretty good shot of matching in the primary care programs. I know that there are rumors going around they are trying to limit the amount of spots for MD/DO students only and restrict IMG students, I can pretty confidently tell you this will not happen. As you might have heard Primary care is extremely short staffed in the U.S and IMG's have some of the most competitive applications when it comes to USMLE scores. We need IMG's to fill those spots. I've seen Caribbean kids go to the unknown carib schools get average scores and still somehow manage to score a residency in the breadbasket states and/or the inner city. I'm not saying that you should consider this gamble but I am saying no matter what happens don't give up. As mentioned, many students might not match on the first go, those students usually do research or work part time at a hospital they would like to do residency at once they build the right connections, that hospital will usually take them for the match in the next year. In the end, I can tell you for a fact the two things that matter are your usmle scores and your connections to your school everything else is obviously important but these two are what will make you a competitive applicant in the match process.
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If you are already in the caribbean, you have no red flags, and are reasonable about picking a field/program, I believe you still have a decent shot at matching. This coming from a guy who would scare people away from the caribbean and would scare away people from DO (if they have the stats and want to have the best chance at matching). For caribbean students who are applying to programs, they would need to apply to double or triple the amount of programs to have the same percentage chance to match (this I state by looking at the NRMP reports, so for those carrib students lurking keep this in mind).

I caution you arindian40, be really careful in picking a rotation site. In the past, I looked at some of the rotation sites for caribbean schools and some don't house all of the green book certified residencies. Not sure if this is a problem now, but something to be aware of. I have read horror stories of people having to hustle from state to state to satisfy the requirement (not so much an issue for elective rotations). Good luck on your endeavors.
 
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In the next four years, at least ten new MD and DO schools will open, further limiting residency slots to IMGs.


arindian470 said:
I want to add that just because you are from the Caribbean doesn't mean that it's the end of the world if you do get through the process you have a pretty good shot of matching in the primary care programs. I know that there are rumors going around they are trying to limit the amount of spots for MD/DO students only and restrict IMG students, I can pretty confidently tell you this will not happen. As you might have heard Primary care is extremely short staffed in the U.S and IMG's have some of the most competitive applications when it comes to USMLE scores. We need IMG's to fill those spots. I've seen Caribbean kids go to the unknown carib schools get average scores and still somehow manage to score a residency in the breadbasket states and/or the inner city. I'm not saying that you should consider this gamble but I am saying no matter what happens don't give up. As mentioned, many students might not match on the first go, those students usually do research or work part time at a hospital they would like to do residency at once they build the right connections, that hospital will usually take them for the match in the next year. In the end, I can tell you for a fact the two things that matter are your usmle scores and your connections to your school everything else is obviously important but these two are what will make you a competitive applicant in the match process.
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alpinism said:
What happened to Pidgeot?? 🙁
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Spf threw a tizzy fit over it, with someone even tagging me specifically just to point out what an attention ***** I must be for the childish gif sig, derailing the first actually non-toxic rape thread I've seen on SDN. Now, I typically avoid SPF to avoid exactly this kind of thing, but when you're tagged, you're tagged.

...which had the side effect of pointing out to me that my sig was annoying the crap out of some people. It was only supposed to be temporary anyway, so I figured that even though they did the opposite of asking nicely, I may as well take it down. Plus, if it was annoying one vocal group, it was probably bugging some others who were just to polite to say anything. Even if that means they just don't recognize the awesomeness of Pokémon.

Don't worry, I still wanna be the very best, like no one ever was!
 
mehc012 said:
Spf threw a tizzy fit over it, with someone even tagging me specifically just to point out what an attention ***** I must be for the childish gif sig, derailing the first actually non-toxic rape thread I've seen on SDN. Now, I typically avoid SPF to avoid exactly this kind of thing, but when you're tagged, you're tagged.

...which had the side effect of pointing out to me that my sig was annoying the crap out of some people. It was only supposed to be temporary anyway, so I figured that even though they did the opposite of asking nicely, I may as well take it down. Plus, if it was annoying one vocal group, it was probably bugging some others who were just to polite to say anything. Even if that means they just don't recognize the awesomeness of Pokémon.

Don't worry, I still wanna be the very best, like no one ever was!
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And yet another reason why SPF is a cesspool that should be deleted.
 
Sardinia said:
@arindian470 What was the class that contributed to the attrition rating in your basic science curriculum? Biochemistry?
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Believe it or not it was Introduction to clinical sciences. Reason being, that was the class people didn't take seriously so professors would intentionally make the questions difficult and people would fail them. Biochemistry was tough but it was definitely doable and people did not underestimate it.
 
IslandStyle808 said:
If you are already in the caribbean, you have no red flags, and are reasonable about picking a field/program, I believe you still have a decent shot at matching. This coming from a guy who would scare people away from the caribbean and would scare away people from DO (if they have the stats and want to have the best chance at matching). For caribbean students who are applying to programs, they would need to apply to double or triple the amount of programs to have the same percentage chance to match (this I state by looking at the NRMP reports, so for those carrib students lurking keep this in mind).

I caution you arindian40, be really careful in picking a rotation site. In the past, I looked at some of the rotation sites for caribbean schools and some don't house all of the green book certified residencies. Not sure if this is a problem now, but something to be aware of. I have read horror stories of people having to hustle from state to state to satisfy the requirement (not so much an issue for elective rotations). Good luck on your endeavors.
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Ur right about the greenbook thing it's really important to keep that in mind I will definitely make sure that is the case for the rots I commit to. Thanks for your help!
 
darkjedi said:
What the heck is SPF
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Imagine the scene from Shawshank redemption where the protagonist crawls through a mile of **** to escape prison except he's not escaping from anything or going anywhere in particular and the tunnel of **** goes on forever.

Also the tunnel is in Florida.
 
mehc012 said:
Spf threw a tizzy fit over it, with someone even tagging me specifically just to point out what an attention ***** I must be for the childish gif sig, derailing the first actually non-toxic rape thread I've seen on SDN. Now, I typically avoid SPF to avoid exactly this kind of thing, but when you're tagged, you're tagged.

...which had the side effect of pointing out to me that my sig was annoying the crap out of some people. It was only supposed to be temporary anyway, so I figured that even though they did the opposite of asking nicely, I may as well take it down. Plus, if it was annoying one vocal group, it was probably bugging some others who were just to polite to say anything. Even if that means they just don't recognize the awesomeness of Pokémon.

Don't worry, I still wanna be the very best, like no one ever was!
Click to expand...

You should go back there and post giant bird pics all over SPF.

Just enough to get them riled up but not enough to get banned.

Hey guys!! Which one should I use for my new signature??
 
Lucca said:
Imagine the scene from Shawshank redemption where the protagonist crawls through a mile of **** to escape prison except he's not escaping from anything or going anywhere in particular and the tunnel of **** goes on forever.

Also the tunnel is in Florida.
Click to expand...

Lol.
 
alpinism said:
You should go back there and post giant bird pics all over SPF.

Just enough to get them riled up but not enough to get banned.

Hey guys!! Which one should I use for my new signature??
Click to expand...
Lolol...really the goal is to just never end up reading anything in SPF again! If I were going that route though I'd just change my sig to include more gifs and then post a bunch of useless, but otherwise unobjectionable comments everywhere in there. Things like "Yeah, you're totally right" and "Word" or "I'm not sure I agree." No TOS violation in that, but if I post 20x in a thread, with the new signature handling rules, the gifs would pop up 20x.

I'm actually trying not to be a dick for once, though...we'll see how it goes. I have a feeling it will backfire, somehow, but it's worth a shot!
 
@NotASerialKiller @piii Here's the true issue with listing zebra residency placements. Yes, they exist. They are attributed an incredibly low placement that no one realistically thinks they should be able to get. Caribbean students don't actually go into school thinking they are getting those residencies. However, they think that they are at least exceptional enough to be in the crowd that gets IM, Psych, and Family Practice. All these zebras establish the high bar for them making them think that it's realistically possible for them to hit a primary care specialty because they don't have the unrealistic expectation of being the zebra. What I'm guessing you mutually both don't know is that it's not realistic for them to expect landing a primary care specialty in their M1 year. You can have 0 expectations until end of M2 when you get your Step 1 contingent upon Step 1 score and if you had to repeat any course which will hurt you during MATCH/SOAP. Most of the people on this site feel like they know what it's like to be a Caribbean student. They don't. If you're a medical school student at an MD/DO school you did research on a Caribbean school, but you can't understand what it's like to actually be the Caribbean Medical School student. And even then, there are Caribbean Medical Students who still don't understand what it means to have made that decision until M3/M4.

Whenever you draw a regression line, there will be outliers. People love outliers. In this case, people don't realize that being on the regression line for specialties is itself an outlier because not all the coordinates make it on the graph. And those that are plotted can be considered to be exceptional outliers regardless of where they fall.
 
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Sardinia said:
@NotASerialKiller @piii Here's the true issue with listing zebra residency placements. Yes, they exist. They are attributed an incredibly low placement that no one realistically thinks they should be able to get. Caribbean students don't actually go into school thinking they are getting those residencies. However, they think that they are at least exceptional enough to be in the crowd that gets IM, Psych, and Family Practice. All these zebras establish the high bar for them making them think that it's realistically possible for them to hit a primary care specialty because they don't have the unrealistic expectation of being the zebra. What I'm guessing you mutually both don't know is that it's not realistic for them to expect landing a primary care specialty in their M1 year. You can have 0 expectations until end of M2 when you get your Step 1 contingent upon Step 1 score and if you had to repeat any course which will hurt you during residency. Most of the people on this site feel like they know what it's like to be a Caribbean student. They don't. If you're a medical school student at an MD/DO school you did research on a Caribbean school, but you can't understand what it's like to actually be the Caribbean Medical School student. And even then, there are Caribbean Medical Students who still don't understand what it means to have made that decision until M3/M4.
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Some of the Zebra are also people from the previous years graduated class who had to take a year(s) off for research or something else(like multiple prelim years). One of Ross GS match and another schools orthopedic match was that way. Counted in 2016 match. By the same merit, US graduates with worse numbers arent the ones having to do this and match a far higher concentrations. My graduating class of 180 had 8 ortho matches and 8 derm. Ive seen other similarly ranked schools with list with much higher percentages as well. If you're patient enough for US schools you don't have to be a special zebra to follow a path.
 
Sardinia said:
@NotASerialKiller @piii Here's the true issue with listing zebra residency placements. Yes, they exist. They are attributed an incredibly low placement that no one realistically thinks they should be able to get. Caribbean students don't actually go into school thinking they are getting those residencies. However, they think that they are at least exceptional enough to be in the crowd that gets IM, Psych, and Family Practice. All these zebras establish the high bar for them making them think that it's realistically possible for them to hit a primary care specialty because they don't have the unrealistic expectation of being the zebra. What I'm guessing you mutually both don't know is that it's not realistic for them to expect landing a primary care specialty in their M1 year. You can have 0 expectations until end of M2 when you get your Step 1 contingent upon Step 1 score and if you had to repeat any course which will hurt you during MATCH/SOAP. Most of the people on this site feel like they know what it's like to be a Caribbean student. They don't. If you're a medical school student at an MD/DO school you did research on a Caribbean school, but you can't understand what it's like to actually be the Caribbean Medical School student. And even then, there are Caribbean Medical Students who still don't understand what it means to have made that decision until M3/M4.

Whenever you draw a regression line, there will be outliers. People love outliers. In this case, people don't realize that being on the regression line for specialties is itself an outlier because not all the coordinates make it on the graph. And those that are plotted can be considered to be exceptional outliers regardless of where they fall.
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I'm not disagreeing with you, I was just laughing at the fact that you told @md-2020 to stop bringing up his valid points and stats about IMGs matching to residencies because it was against the touted doctrine on SDN. Just seemed narrow minded to censor that.
 
piii said:
I'm not disagreeing with you, I was just laughing at the fact that you told @md-2020 to stop bringing up his valid points and stats about IMGs matching to residencies because it was against the touted doctrine on SDN. Just seemed narrow minded to censor that.
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On the contrary, it's because I've been too broad and liberal about the topic that my colleagues continue to be hoodwinked into Caribbean schools. I'm not interested in representing an objective truth when I've personally learned of two upperclassmen who scrapped to M4 and didn't have a match, nada, zilch, nothing. No results through SOAP either. Maybe I'm too sentimental, but when you witness someone hitting that low how could you recommend anyone that they have a % of being the success unless you have proficiency in fields like car/stock sales?

I wouldn't call my doctrine an SDN doctrine, I'd call it avoiding someone making a $200,000+ lifetime commitment with risky return. If that's considered by you to be a doctrine and not a sincere concern for someone to be burdened for life with financial destitution, then I have to attribute it to a lack of concern or a lack of having been ladled with serious debt through poor decision making. It doesn't cost $200,000+ to invest in redoing an application. If you have to invest that amount then there are way more pressing issues.
 
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@Sardinia People have a right to ruin their lives. If they understand that those matches very rarely happen, and that even making it out and matching anywhere is far from guaranteed, then everyone has done their job informing them. And that information is everywhere on SDN.

If you genuinely believe that you have to hide facts from people in their 20s to stop them from making risky decisions that you wouldn't make.... well okay. But that belief is certainly not shared by everyone. I'd never recommend that someone go to the Caribbean, but if I tell someone exactly how it goes down and what the risks are and they still want to, that's their choice. Isn't that what America is all about?
 
NotASerialKiller said:
@Sardinia People have a right to ruin their lives. If they understand that those matches very rarely happen, and that even making it out and matching anywhere is far from guaranteed, then everyone has done their job informing them. And that information is everywhere on SDN.

If you genuinely believe that you have to hide facts from people in their 20s to stop them from making risky decisions that you wouldn't make.... well okay. But that belief is certainly not shared by everyone. I'd never recommend that someone go to the Caribbean, but if I tell someone exactly how it goes down and what the risks are and they still want to, that's their choice. Isn't that what America is all about?
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That may be what "America" is all about, but this is an advice board, and people come here for help in making career decisions, not to be told the unrealistic "it's risky but some people do great". By saying people have the right to ruin their lives you are abdicating your responsibility that you took on when you decided to participate in an advice thread. People who read these threads often haven't frequented SDN for years like some of us, and might know nothing but the contents of one thread and whatever they googled on some offshore website from Guyana. And frankly the people the offshore mills prey on are some of the more vulnerable and uninformed.
 
Law2Doc said:
That may be what "America" is all about, but this is an advice board, and people come here for help in making career decisions, not to be told the unrealistic "it's risky but some people do great". By saying people have the right to ruin their lives you are abdicating your responsibility that you took on when you decided to participate in an advice thread. People who read these threads often haven't frequented SDN for years like some of us, and might know nothing but the contents of one thread and whatever they googled on some offshore website from Guyana. And frankly the people the offshore mills prey on are some of the more vulnerable and uninformed.
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I think anyone advising a US student to go carrib at this point is showing a lack of regard for that person
 
sb247 said:
I think anyone advising a US student to go carrib at this point is showing a lack of regard for that person
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No one was doing that, we just said that it was odd to tell @md-2020 to not post accurate stats lest someone make a poor decision.

In my posts I was saying that you can tell someone it's a bad idea to go to the Caribbean while acknowledging that a few people have matched well. I think if you try to hide information, then people are going to find out anyway and then not trust what they read here if they realize there's a concerted effort to stop people from going no matter what. I'm pretty surprised that so many people are giving push-back on the notion that you should give students all of the information as well as your assessment of it. I personally think that going to the Caribbean is foolish, and I can argue why without hiding anything.
 
NotASerialKiller said:
...
In my posts I was saying that you can tell someone it's a bad idea to go to the Caribbean while acknowledging that a few people have matched well...
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It's not effective though. It's like telling someone that odds are poor for winning the lottery and following it with "but here are a few of the winners and look at their lives now!" You lose your point in the packaging, which as I mentioned above are so few that they ought not be mentioned at all.

And I'm not sure I saw any good "data" presented here -- the OP mentioned people getting Derm and ortho, I said there were so few matches into Derm and ortho that they could essentially be rounded down to zero, and someone posted a link which showed single digits of each such matches, which, when looked at in light of the thousands of people who will go offshore for med school, is going to reflect but a fraction of a percent --my point.
 
NotASerialKiller said:
No one was doing that, we just said that it was odd to tell @md-2020 to not post accurate stats lest someone make a poor decision.

In my posts I was saying that you can tell someone it's a bad idea to go to the Caribbean while acknowledging that a few people have matched well. I think if you try to hide information, then people are going to find out anyway and then not trust what they read here if they realize there's a concerted effort to stop people from going no matter what. I'm pretty surprised that so many people are giving push-back on the notion that you should give students all of the information as well as your assessment of it. I personally think that going to the Caribbean is foolish, and I can argue why without hiding anything.
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Agreed. If someone wants to be a doctor, they better have the reasoning skills to determine that just because it may be possible to match into a competitive speciality (say 2-3% chance or whatever it is) out of the Caribbean that does not make it a wise decision..
 
Indeed. And this process is confounded by the fact that being poor at research is a characteristic of some of those drawn to the Carib schools. A fact that PDs are well aware of.

TRAVELER2016 said:
Agreed. If someone wants to be a doctor, they better have the reasoning skills to determine that just because it may be possible to match into a competitive speciality (say 2-3% chance or whatever it is) out of the Caribbean that does not make it a wise decision..
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mehc012 said:
Spf threw a tizzy fit over it, with someone even tagging me specifically just to point out what an attention ***** I must be for the childish gif sig, derailing the first actually non-toxic rape thread I've seen on SDN. Now, I typically avoid SPF to avoid exactly this kind of thing, but when you're tagged, you're tagged.

...which had the side effect of pointing out to me that my sig was annoying the crap out of some people. It was only supposed to be temporary anyway, so I figured that even though they did the opposite of asking nicely, I may as well take it down. Plus, if it was annoying one vocal group, it was probably bugging some others who were just to polite to say anything. Even if that means they just don't recognize the awesomeness of Pokémon.

Don't worry, I still wanna be the very best, like no one ever was!
Click to expand...
Yeah... that wasn't cool at all. I gave them a lot of **** for that.

While in principle I applaud your efforts to stay above the fray, sometimes people just need to be called out for being ass*****.
 
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ZedsDed said:
Yeah... that wasn't cool at all. I gave them a lot of **** for that.

While in principle I applaud your efforts to stay above the fray, sometimes people just need to be called out for being ass*****.
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Haha, I did both. I told them they were jerks and then changed my sig anyway.

Thanks for saying something, though...it's easy to get overwhelmed when everyone's piling on and nobody says anything on your end of things!
 
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