I was reading through these threads and well, I have some questions...
1. How many of you commenting on the Caribbean medical school path REALLY have some type of knowledge about the admissions process, the medical education itself, and then the match rate at each of these schools as they exist TODAY? Not last year, not a decade ago, not through a friend or even "someone you know"...but personal intimate knowledge of these programs as they exist today. And then how many of you admittedly actually know nothing about any of those things and still decide to put in your .02 anyway knowing full well you have no idea what you are talking about?
2. What exactly is the underlying message here regarding Caribbean medical schools? I don't understand if people are actually encouraging people to succeed, if people are discouraging people from succeeding, or if people are simply spewing their bias regardless of whether a prospective students succeeds or does not succeed in becoming a physician. We have people posting here claiming to be students, people claiming to be graduates, and even a few "program directors" who appear to not be fans of Caribbean medical students oddly giving their input to prospective Caribbean medical students but I just can't seem to figure out if we are encouraging others to succeed or just injecting our own personal biases into the legitimate career aspirations of people we know nothing about, people who might be very different than us, and people whom we will probably never see in our life. I mean if someone wants to go to the Caribbean to become a physician, do you feel better about yourself discouraging them not to try even though you know nothing about them, their motivation, and then knowing that there is absolutely no way to predict their ultimate outcome?
A lot of the information on this part of SDN is very vague at best and not convincing. All I have found are personal opinions and data that can only infer a possible outcome at best. There is absolutely zero advice or statistical data on this forum that can predict anyone's outcome with any type of absoluteness. We all know people match from the Caribbean and, as far as I can tell, that really has not changed drastically considering some people have posted that all Caribbean Schools should have been closed by today. So if people do succeed down this route --and I'm talking about the most legitimate two or three schools, what is the real message you guys are trying to send to someone, who you do not know, who asks "should I go to the Caribbean?"
Is the answer "are you able to write a check?" or "do you want to be bankrupt with no chance of practicing medicine." really the best you can do? Is that 100% accurate? If not, then that's not real advice to be honest.
St. George's University recently graduated 900 or so MD's a few days ago. I'm just curious how some of you guys come up with an explanation for that. You obviously don't know those 900 graduates on a personal level let alone know anything about their stats or the PD's that gave them the green light so who's to say some prospective student cannot one day be in that cohort if some cohort of Caribbean medical students is obviously succeeding?
