Medical International Student considering SGU med school(Caribbean) - What should I do?

[TheBoneDoctah]

Hello!

I sincerely hope you and your loved ones are safe and well during this unpredictable time. I am undergrad student who just finished sophomore year at UC Berkeley. I went to public highschool in California and all but my green card is still in process after 4 years and I doubt it'll come out anytime soon as it taking 10-15 years are not surprising. Though Berkeley took me in as a resident and even gave me generous financial aids, I recently found out that all med schools will consider me as an international student, and my chances are very very slim.

I made a huge mistake of taking engineering math my freshman year that put a C+ on my transcript and I got B0s on Psych and Socio. Tho in all of my sceince classes I got B+ and A- pulling my GPA to 3.35(which is very low for med schools). Since I finished most of my med pre req I think I can get around 3.5 by the time I apply. I havent taken MCAT yet but I started prepping for it and I have above average ECs.

Now I've seen the list of MD schools that accepts international students, but they are top notch schools way way off my shot and the number of students who maticulate are <5. I looked in to DO schools as well and there are only handful and one "international friendly" school actually specifically said not accepting green card pending students. So for me, SGU is like the only true international friendly med school I actually have a shot at and opens the door of becoming a doctor I wanted to be ever since.

I've heard and seen plenty of posts saying SGU should be your absolute last resort and it will drop tons of people and I should apply 2 or 3 cycles of us med schools first. Now if I had green card, that would've absolutely been my case, shooting shots at low tier us med schools and DO schools before going Caribbean. My dad already've been working his literal butt off in Korea to support our family here but moneys becoming very tight lately due to circumstances, the vrius and high dollar exchange rate. The last thing I want to do is put another burden to his shoulder to do post-bacc or masters or strengthening my app for us schools.

Sorry it's been a long post but thanks in advance for reading this far. Ive heard lots of negatives of SGU but do you guys think SGU might be one of the primary choices for my case? Any advices on how I should select US MD/DO schools are also greatly appreciated.

Unless you complete an SMP or postbac (which like you said would be pricey), I think your only shot is DO schools (pending a decent MCAT). I do not know the details of the green card situation and will leave that to the other experts on here to answer for you.

Across the board, people basically say Caribbean is very, very last resort. The reason is because the amount of students who start medical school and actually get residency spots is low. If I were you, I would look up these statistics before committing to something like that. However, like you said, if you absolutely want to be a doctor and it’s your ONLY shot, you need to weigh the risks and benefits. You also need to do VERY well in a Caribbean school to have the same opportunity a USMD or USDO student would have. For example, one of my friends scored ~265 on his USMLE at a Caribbean school. They will most likely match. However, I know multiple people who went to the Caribbean against advice and now have a 205-210 USMLE who most likely will go unmatched and be stuck with 500k in student loans (plus loans from undergrad and postbac they did).

Thank you for your reply and advices. After reading your reply and doing whole day of researching I decided to focus on MCAT to apply for US DOs. If I dont get into any, I'll take a gap year for more clinical exposures and such for one more cycle of DOs and PAs, then consider Caribbean. Again thank you so much!

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