What are you asking here, is the entire RCSI a thinly veiled country club?
In the long run, how you're respected in medicine will be based on your individual performance on standardized tests, the recommendations you acquire from the senior doctors and consultants with whom you work, and your publication and patient care history. It is not a profession in which incompetent people can easily hide.
Look, every school has its stories that are mostly based on rumours and innuendo (and internet postings). I can tell you that doctors trained at the RCSI go around the world to work. The college maintains regular placements for its students in places like John Hopkin's in the United States. Most of the teams we are assigned to are headed by physicians and surgeons with incredible reputations, publications, and skills. I highly doubt that any of these individuals and institutions would suffer fools lightly. At very least, people regularly fail classes at the RCSI.
Each RCSI class is made up of about 40% Irish students. These graduates go on to work in Ireland, a country more than slightly sensitive to medical incompetence (take the recent breast cancer screening snafu for example). Do you really think that if there were some massive ‘buy-your-degree' institution in Ireland that no one would have noticed the resulting incompetence, moreover that the school would enjoy the top reputation it does?
I can also tell you that the same type of stories about 'the gentleman's C' constantly went around the ivy league school at which I did my first degree. While it may be possible that these things happen, the vast majority of us are in the same boat. We're trying to survive by our wits and sweat--not by our wallets. Don't believe half of what you read.
- No real reason for this smiley, just puts a bit of colour on the post!!
