Hey guys,
Current UCD 4th year student here, I'd be happy to answer any questions people have! I'm from Canada and matched into family medicine in the states, so if people have questions about being a Canadian applying to the states or matching in general, I can help with that too.
To start off, most north americans do live in residence the first year, although I myself did not, along with a few others. Many lived in the Glenomena residence; this dorm is set up so that you have 5 bedrooms each with their own bathroom that share a living room and kitchen. This worked out for some of my classmates and not others. The dorm facilitates trying to keep older people in the graduate programs together in one dorm, but some of my classmates were stuck in the dorms with 4 18 year olds who were just out of home and starting university, infuriating if you are older and have a previous degree. Glenomena is definitely much much cheaper than finding a 1 bedroom place on your own, but you do risk being put with younger kids who are noisy and disruptive, hence why I chose to live off campus. You do have the option of looking for shared housing through the popular rental websites, or there is a Facebook group for young doctors in Ireland who often post about needing roommates.
The first 2 years at UCD are lectures, and the last 2 are clinical placements in hospital, just like the American and Canadian schools. Lectures are good, the classic style where the professors teach from powerpoint. Obviously, they're dependent on the professor and we had some excellent proffs who love teaching and others who were not so great, as you'll find at any school. Mostly very good though
. The curriculum is systems based. Year 1 semester 1 is all your basic stuff - ie. cell biology etc. Year 1 semester 2, you start getting into systems. You do the anatomy, physiology, pathology and pharmacology of cardio and resp in year 1, then of GI/GU, endocrine, neuro and anything else in year 2. Year 2 semester 2, you start taking pre-clinical courses, so you'll get classroom lectures on OB, peds, palliative care etc. to start preparing you for clinical rotations. This is interpreted with visits to the ob hospital, the hospice etc. to start getting a taste of being in the clinical setting. Clinical skills - ie. how to do the clinical examinations - is a longitudinal curriculum and you get a 2-3 hr clinical skills session about every other week over the first 2 years. There are also anatomy labs, small group tutorials and problem based learning mixed in for most courses to solidify the learning. The exams are tough, and the exam and class schedule only makes them tougher. In our second year, we had 7 exams over 9 days during the christmas exam period. Its definitely do-able, but you'll need to be in the habit of studying from day 1 and if you are used to straight A's, get used to straight B's and C's. That being said, the top 10-20% of the class can pull off all A's in the first 2 years. The last thing to say about that, is that your grades matter very minimally in medical school! As long as they are not all D's and you don't have any fails, you're fine.
The second 2 years are clinical rotations at the hospitals. For medicine and surgery, we are divided up between the Mater Hospital and St.Vincent's hospital, easily the 2 best hospitals in Dublin. UCD definitely gets the best hospitals, and my friends from other schools agree. You'll spend some time on peripheral rotations out at Wexford General Hospital and other hospitals around Dublin. OB takes place at Holles Street Hospital and the Coombe Hospital, while peds takes place at Temple Street and Crumlin Hospitals (all in Dublin). Any rotations outside of Dublin, UCD pays to put you up in a B&B. I think I only had about 5-6 weeks total outside Dublin over 2 years, which is much much less peripheral time than RCSI students have to do. Exams during these years are notoriously hard, the school grades to a C class average, and they really won't give out A's to anyone except the top few students. I got C's and B's in all my clerkships, even an A in one and I am approximately at the 35th percentile in my class to give you an idea. When you are going through the matching process, UCD does write into your Dean's letter about their grading system, that a C is average and a B is above average. Your class rank is included as well, which speaks more about your performance than your individual grades. Not a problem for matching, that way programs get accurate info on your academic performance, I was told in all my interviews that my grades were very good.
Overall, I had a positive experience at UCD. Yes, there was an incredible amount of stress being an IMG and lots of hoops to jump through. At the end of the day, the match rates for my class this year have been fantastic and there's plenty of things IMG's can do to make their chances good if they are willing to work hard.