USMLE Pass Rates: SGU>>>DO

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I don't get it. Why is that impressive if most programs will accept the COMLEX? The USMLE is an optional test for DOs. It might behoove you to take at least Step I for some of the more competitive programs, but you're going to be fine more often than not with a decent COMLEX score.

So...even if SGU had a 90% and up passing rate for Step I, why do we care?
 
we dont, but bumping zombie threads allows me to post amazing pictures like this.

threadnecromancyjk7.jpg
 
7 Years removed?? Impressive work Morsetlis. You really dug this one up from the grave :laugh:.
 
News Flash: SGU has a 0% pass rate on Comlex I. omg!! woahhh
 

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Bones DO said:
News Flash: SGU has a 0% pass rate on Comlex I. omg!! woahhh
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dude those figures are inflated. SGU only lets an indeterminately small percentage of its students actually sit for the COMLEX. 🙄
 
I know this post is ancient, but stranger in a strange land was phenomenal....guilty pleasure fulfilled.
 
Haha, gotta love these threads.

Also, the fact that USMLE pass rates in the Caribbean are higher (albeit skewed in this direction) is irrelevant. DOs don't have to take the USMLE to get a medical license and practice in a specialty they want. You'll still get paid the same as an MD in an identical position, and you'll still have the same practice rights as any other physician in the US.

Sure, it behooves you to take the USMLE if you want to match into some specialties or if you for some mysterious reason still think chasing prestige is going to pay off, but the end result is more often than not the same, USMLE or not. All this squabbling is silly.
 
I'm sure the number of 4.0's in CCs is higher than 4.0's in 4 year reputable universities. Same comparison in this thread imo.
 
Pass rates, scores, etc. for Caribbean grads are becoming largely irrelevant. Given the increase in US MD and DO enrollment and capped residency funding, many, many programs, especially in competitive specialties, are not looking at Caribbean grads REGARDLESS of USMLE score. While this may not have been the case 10 years ago, to go to a Caribbean school in 2012 is a foolish choice. Other IMG's (India, etc.) are only being considered when they have already practiced the specialty in their country, have significant research and publication history (including external funding) and USMLE's in the 90+ percentiles. Anyone counseling people to go foreign MD in this era is doing a disservice.
 
with the massive increase in DO schools the IMG are going to be in a whole world of hate...

graduate ASAP if your are IMG...

in 5-10 years...75% of those schools will close

SGU will end up increasing their classes...doing the ole Ross 3X enrollment with 500-800 students each term.....the class pass rate, carribean USMLE scores to write the actual USMLE will also inflate like no tomorrow...

you will see 70% of the class getting dropped out
 
se20001984 said:
with the massive increase in DO schools the IMG are going to be in a whole world of hate...

graduate ASAP if your are IMG...

in 5-10 years...75% of those schools will close

SGU will end up increasing their classes...doing the ole Ross 3X enrollment with 500-800 students each term.....the class pass rate, carribean USMLE scores to write the actual USMLE will also inflate like no tomorrow...

you will see 70% of the class getting dropped out
Click to expand...

The people running SGU are good at their business. I'm surprised they haven't opened a US/DO campus, a'la RVU.
 
I personally think SGU is a great school...it was the only IMG school id would go to if i didnt get into DO (notice the brain drain as the DOs are getting the good IMG students)..

SGU= great education..I consider them...on par with american MD and DO schools

i think whats scary is the OTHER IMG schools.....there are 10 medical school in the islands now...and ALL of them are horrible (look at value med)

most are mcat free or an mcat score of 15 is enough
gpas of 2.0s...
very scary stuff...

still the news goes...
MD>DO> IMG
 
se20001984 said:
I personally think SGU is a great school...it was the only IMG school id would go to if i didnt get into DO (notice the brain drain as the DOs are getting the good IMG students)..

SGU= great education..I consider them...on par with american MD and DO schools

i think whats scary is the OTHER IMG schools.....there are 10 medical school in the islands now...and ALL of them are horrible (look at value med)

most are mcat free or an mcat score of 15 is enough
gpas of 2.0s...
very scary stuff...

still the news goes...
MD>DO> IMG
Click to expand...

I see what youre attempting to do, make a reasoned and rational differentiation of what appears to be one competent school in a sea of rascals... but you are so very wrong. SGU is the worst of them all because they are, in every imaginable metric, exactly the same as the other schools but they try to lie about it with misleading data. You are definitely not the only one to fall for this, so I am not blaming you. Though, your comment that you'd put them on-par with any US school made me a little ill to read so if i do vomit on something im sending you the bill haha.

koolaid.jpg
 
DocEspana said:
I see what youre attempting to do, make a reasoned and rational differentiation of what appears to be one competent school in a sea of rascals... but you are so very wrong. SGU is the worst of them all because they are, in every imaginable metric, exactly the same as the other schools but they try to lie about it with misleading data. You are definitely not the only one to fall for this, so I am not blaming you. Though, your comment that you'd put them on-par with any US school made me a little ill to read so if i do vomit on something im sending you the bill haha.
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Eh, I'm no fan of SGU (or Carribean schools in general for that matter), but I think that's a little harsh. For all of SGU's faults -- and there are many -- it is certainly not the worst Caribbean school.

As far as I'm concerned (and this is based on perusing numerous SDN threads, talking with SGU grads, and studying matching data), SGU remains the best option for students who a) cannot get into US MD or DO schools despite multiple attempts and b) don't care about racking up an enormous amount of un-subsidized debt. SGU may not hold your hand, but if you go there and study your ass off, you can become one fine doctor.
 
toxicwombat said:
Eh, I'm no fan of SGU (or Carribean schools in general for that matter), but I think that's a little harsh. For all of SGU's faults -- and there are many -- it is certainly not the worst Caribbean school.

As far as I'm concerned (and this is based on perusing numerous SDN threads, talking with SGU grads, and studying matching data), SGU remains the best option for students who a) cannot get into US MD or DO schools despite multiple attempts and b) don't care about racking up an enormous amount of un-subsidized debt. SGU may not hold your hand, but if you go there and study your ass off, you can become one fine doctor.
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You're describing Ross, not SGU. Ross is the one that holds no hands and cuts people mercilessly but puts out a good product by the mechanism of culling the weak.

SGU is the one who won't cut people but will instead keep you in repeated year and decelleration hell until you're the top of your class by sheer endurance to not quit. Theory final product is no better than Ross saba or AUC. But they claim it is by falsifying statistics and misrepresenting class sizes.

Edit: I know I've said before that SGU has the most interesting match class... But that's more a function of how many of the 'my daddy is the head of x department' kids. I could he wrong, but it does appear like 7 or 10 total outliers every year who go to ridiculous places with no one else filling mid level ones. Meanwhile misrepresenting your results really rubs me the wrong way about them.
 
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Ross cuts bc they let in students who have no desire to be doctors
who have 2.0 gpas and a 18 mcat (there min for acceptance!!)

at least sgu has a 3.4 and 25 mcat
 
se20001984 said:
I personally think SGU is a great school...it was the only IMG school id would go to if i didnt get into DO (notice the brain drain as the DOs are getting the good IMG students)..

SGU= great education..I consider them...on par with american MD and DO schools

i think whats scary is the OTHER IMG schools.....there are 10 medical school in the islands now...and ALL of them are horrible (look at value med)

most are mcat free or an mcat score of 15 is enough
gpas of 2.0s...
very scary stuff...

still the news goes...
MD>DO> IMG
Click to expand...


Sorry I made a typo
MD=DO>IMG
 
se20001984 said:
Ross cuts bc they let in students who have no desire to be doctors
who have 2.0 gpas and a 18 mcat (there min for acceptance!!)

at least sgu has a 3.4 and 25 mcat
Click to expand...

SGU misrepresents their stats with such frequency that I would not take those numbers seriously at all. Remember, their 90-something percent match rate is done by not counting hundreds of students who do graduate under the premise that people who are not allowed to have all their paperwork for residencies (because of not jumping through one academic hoop or another) filled out shouldnt be counted as ever existing as medical students when you measure your graduation match rate.

I wouldnt be surprised (though i have zero proof of this) that the GPA and MCAT stat is collected 4 years after enrollment, once they've decellerated/repeated/broken the spirit of enough kids to only have the upper 1/2 to 2/3 remaining to be counted.
 
DocEspana said:
You're describing Ross, not SGU. Ross is the one that holds no hands and cuts people mercilessly but puts out a good product by the mechanism of culling the weak.

SGU is the one who won't cut people but will instead keep you in repeated year and decelleration hell until you're the top of your class by sheer endurance to not quit. Theory final product is no better than Ross saba or AUC. But they claim it is by falsifying statistics and misrepresenting class sizes.

Edit: I know I've said before that SGU has the most interesting match class... But that's more a function of how many of the 'my daddy is the head of x department' kids. I could he wrong, but it does appear like 7 or 10 total outliers every year who go to ridiculous places with no one else filling mid level ones. Meanwhile misrepresenting your results really rubs me the wrong way about them.
Click to expand...

I see. Yeah, that's definitely a huge problem if it's true -- but how can we be sure they distort their data? In other words, how did you "discover the hidden truth" about SGU?

(not trying to play devil's advocate here -- I'm genuinely curious)
 
Go to their website and all the info is there. Its just in all different places. It also helps to have an sgubay access so that you can access the match lists, but enough people have historically posted the match lists on here that you can backdoor your way into the sgubay and then its rather obvious how to find different match years. Basically what happens is that various portions of their website brag about how many students they enroll in their medical program, how many cycles of enrollment they have, how high of a percent their enrollment is american students, and how many they match each year. Having actual friends at SGU to confirm everything I find also helps.

I've posted the exact numbers a lot of time, so im going to recreate them from memory. If i'm off by 50 here or 100 there, then chalk it up to that. Their enrollment class is 325-350 (students say 400+, but officially they say 325-350). They have 3 enrollment classes a year. So we're at 1000-to-1200.+ They claim to have ~90% american or canadian students. so lets just knock a clean 100 off assuming *no* non-north american ever matches. 900-1100 students. They only match 500 (505 in 2011's match) people per year, INCLUDING pre-match offers. But they will claim that they matched 505 out of 535 students, because (and this required student anecdotes to corroborate, though it was apparent from the numbers) they basically will either decellerate you until you quit out of frustration, or they will not allow you to sit for an exam all island students have to take to qualify for residency. Without being allowed to sit you cannot apply, so SGU finds no need to count you in their "match rate" as you would never qualify to match anyway with them holding you back from that test.

That 97% of the students they allow to apply match is true. But the fact that they refuse to count people who they allow to graduate but do not allow to apply for residency (as well as causing ~50% of the class to "disappear" before graduation) is frustrating. Especially when they get the reputation as the "anti-ross". Ross will accept anyone and fail your ass right back to america, debt in hands. SGU isn't any better, they just prefer to milk you for money until you either succeed or quit. But I personally think their worse because at least Ross is rather clear about what it does, SGU just puts out misleading data and hopes no one takes time to connect dots.
 
Its also time for me to do my usual disclaimer: I do believe the island schools serve a purpose to catch a certain nuber of qualified applicants that slip through the fingers of the american and canadian systems. I also believe that physicians who make it out of there are almost always fully competent and occasionally brilliant. But I believe, with a burning passion, that the business model of these schools is predatory and wrong and that I will celebrate their closing, assuming there are american schools to pick up the slack and collect those quailified applicants when these island cash machines fade into obscurity.
 
DocEspana said:
... I believe, with a burning passion, that the business model of these schools is predatory and wrong and that I will celebrate their closing, assuming there are american schools to pick up the slack and collect those quailified applicants when these island cash machines fade into obscurity.
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6386_4558.gif


Have you heard the radio advertisements for SGU yet? :facepalm:
 
DocEspana said:
Its also time for me to do my usual disclaimer: I do believe the island schools serve a purpose to catch a certain nuber of qualified applicants that slip through the fingers of the american and canadian systems. I also believe that physicians who make it out of there are almost always fully competent and occasionally brilliant. But I believe, with a burning passion, that the business model of these schools is predatory and wrong and that I will celebrate their closing, assuming there are american schools to pick up the slack and collect those quailified applicants when these island cash machines fade into obscurity.
Click to expand...

Good posts. Thanks for the insider info! I must say, though, SGU does an excellent job at advertising, as amoral as it might be.
 
DocEspana said:
Its also time for me to do my usual disclaimer: I do believe the island schools serve a purpose to catch a certain nuber of qualified applicants that slip through the fingers of the american and canadian systems. I also believe that physicians who make it out of there are almost always fully competent and occasionally brilliant. But I believe, with a burning passion, that the business model of these schools is predatory and wrong and that I will celebrate their closing, assuming there are american schools to pick up the slack and collect those quailified applicants when these island cash machines fade into obscurity.
Click to expand...

Awesome post. 👍
 
With the number of DO schools increase

and the spots that each new DO school increases

the ONLY attraction..aside from..yea not getting accepted anywhere else

will be getting an MD degree at a faster pace...as most are with an accelerated pace
 
Makes perfect sense to me. Some of thos schools (SGU included I believe) have the students take the NBME practice USMLE exams and if they do not meet the threshold, are not allowed to take the USMLE. So obviously, having trained for the USMLE and having taken the pretest, they'll be much better off than a student who did not have to jump through these same hoops.
 
LightYe said:
Makes perfect sense to me. Some of thos schools (SGU included I believe) have the students take the NBME practice USMLE exams and if they do not meet the threshold, are not allowed to take the USMLE. So obviously, having trained for the USMLE and having taken the pretest, they'll be much better off than a student who did not have to jump through these same hoops.
Click to expand...

This is not limited to carribean schools. My US MD school just implemented the same policy this year. I think it is good for the students because if you fail step 1 it doesn't matter what you get on the second try, you will not even be looked at by competitive specialties.
 
SGU is simply a superior school
 
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