Inquiries Regarding Irish Schools

[bigchoader]

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As some of you have already helped me with questions about UK med school, I now am hoping to get a couple answers to questions regarding schools in Ireland. The following questions are probably so fundemental that no one really talked about them in previous thread (not that I could find at least).

Why is it that Atlantic Bridge Schools seem to cater to NAns? Are Irish schools any less difficult to gain acceptance to than schools in the UK as an NAn? What about in comparison to schools in the states?

There was someone asking about Ireland vs Carribean. I am under the impression that people attend carribean schools generally when they got shut out from American schools. If this is the truth (in general), is the Atlantic Bridge program the same sort of thing?

Please do not think that my question is refering to carribean/irish medical schools, and the educations which they provide as being of a lesser quality than other schools. I am not. I am simply trying to get a fundamental understanding of the atlantic bridge program.

Thanks

Ross

 

[bigchoader]

I should have stated above that my question partially stems from the Irish vs Carribean Thread and partially from the Irish Med School Stats thread.

Those who were accepted to Atlantic Bridge had some very high quality stats. ie Mid thirties on MCATs. High GPA's too. I am not worried about my GPA. Is mid thirties on the MCAT a pretty mandetory score for consideration?

 

[leorl]

Not exactly sure why Atlantic Bridge serves north americans except for the fact that there was interest and to make the application process easier for the individual schools, they created a centralized organization to handle administration. They don't exactly cater to NAers per say, but centralize things. They do not actively recruit NAers either as the Caribbean schools. None of the schools recruit except for maybe RCSI.

Irish schools are "easier" than UK schools especially now that foreign students are not really being accepted into UK schools at the moment because of their oversupply problem.

In the past, NAers who could not get into American schools did consider Irish ones. In more recent years, this is turning out not to be the case. And as you may have noticed, generally we tell people that if you are not competitive as a US applicant, you won't be competitive as an Irish one. However, I do know a couple people here who did get very substandard scores. Most of the NAers here that I know have come because a) international background who want to explore out of the US and b) had extra experiences like PhD, Masters and did not want to go back spending the years to complete US pre-reqs or MCAT.

 

[bigchoader]

Not exactly sure why Atlantic Bridge serves north americans except for the fact that there was interest and to make the application process easier for the individual schools, they created a centralized organization to handle administration. They don't exactly cater to NAers per say, but centralize things. They do not actively recruit NAers either as the Caribbean schools. None of the schools recruit except for maybe RCSI.

Irish schools are "easier" than UK schools especially now that foreign students are not really being accepted into UK schools at the moment because of their oversupply problem.

In the past, NAers who could not get into American schools did consider Irish ones. In more recent years, this is turning out not to be the case. And as you may have noticed, generally we tell people that if you are not competitive as a US applicant, you won't be competitive as an Irish one. However, I do know a couple people here who did get very substandard scores. Most of the NAers here that I know have come because a) international background who want to explore out of the US and b) had extra experiences like PhD, Masters and did not want to go back spending the years to complete US pre-reqs or MCAT.

Thanks Leorl;

From my research on the subject thus far, I thought that it seemed as though MCAT is mandatory for Irish admissions. Verdad o Falso?

Further, taking into consideration the two main categories in to which your colleagues fall into, is there a low percentage of pre-med graduated students from NA?

Thanks

Ross

 

[leorl]

MCAT is mandatory for all except Trinity. I think it's required because their standardized tests are very different from ours and so they need some way of assessing competence as a student.

To answer your question, most people in the direct-entry program (classification now confused by the fact that the colleges have recently changed curriculum to a 5 yr. course) have undergraduate degrees. There are few high school leavers but they exist, as do the ones who started but did not complete an undergraduate degree prior to commencing medical studies at an Irish university.

 

[roo]

Why is it that Atlantic Bridge Schools seem to cater to NAns?

In my opinion, the reason why Atlantic Bridge service caters to North Americans:

That is the area that it covers. The premise is that it is much easier to be in the same time zone, be familiar with the countries, have cheap postal rates, etc. It is a cost/benefit item. There is enough potential candidates that would have a decent shot of Irish acceptance in US/Canada (and have the tuition money available or available on loan) to warrant a centralized service. There may be some other good candidates say in Chile, but the numbers are likely not high enough to make a Chile center with full-time staff-->they would likely just would have to send their stuff directly to Ireland to apply. There was a guy from Mauritius in the UCD class 2003 (small Island off Africa), but I don't know if there was enough applicants to warrant a dedicated centralized service for Mauritius, or if he applied directly. I know some countries that have students train in Ireland have the applications done for them (ie the country [eg Botswana] will have, say, 4 full tuition scholarships to Ireland-->everyone in Botswana that is interested writes a test, the top four winners go to Ireland, thus don't really need a centralized service).

I think there is other Atlantic-Bridge-like things set up in other areas of the world for other cost/effective areas. For example, I believe at one point there was a centralized service set up for English-speaking SouthEast Asian to send their applications to Irish medical schools, but don't know its name or if it is still there.

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As to the medical schools themselves catering to North Americans, I couldn't really say that is the case, as in UCD class of 2003 there was a large swatch of Malaysians, Middle East, Africa and a smattering from SE asia like Singapore, the rest of EU and Australia/NZ. I don't have the exact numbers but in my visual recollection the numbers of folks from NA were about the same as the rest of the students who were from other countries besides Ireland/US/Canada.

Best wishes,
roo

 

[JediBookworm]

RCSI has a list of advisory agents throughout the world:

http://www.rcsi.ie/admissions/advisory_agents/index.asp?id=219&pid=219&jid=24&jpid=219

 

[docolive]

RCSI has a list of advisory agents throughout the world:

http://www.rcsi.ie/admissions/advisory_agents/index.asp?id=219&pid=219&jid=24&jpid=219

Interesting; I must have missed that when navigating the RCSI site. 🙂