While certain foreign schools are well respected, the truism is that if you want to practice in the US, your best bet is to go to med school in the US. PDs are unfamiliar with many foreign programs and probably all Australian programs. Those programs tend not to focus the material to that necessary for the US boards, but more importantly, they don't have US rotations, which will be HUGE in the process of landing a US residency. PDs NEED to know your track record in the US rotations, and in away (audition) rotations, because they aren't accepting a graduate of a particular school, they are accepting an employee who can jump into the role of US hospital intern. This isn't like applying for grad school at the residency level, where it's adequate to look good on paper, it's applying for a job, first and foremost. So grades/school name doesn't mean as much as knowing you did a sub-I in surgery, or an audition rotation at that hospital, and really wowed the attendings. For that reason, many foreign options that don't have US rotations are poorly designed for landing US residencies, and it would be hard to crack into even if you were coming from an Oxford. Because while it's great to be coming from someplace known for excellence in higher learning, what the PD really cares about, what will avoid him having headaches from, is that he can throw you into an ICU during intern year and you won't need a lot of coddling and oversight during your first overnight alone in the unit. With the exception of the in-service and specialty exams each year, you won't really be regarded highly for your academic prowess during residency year, you will be held in high esteem for your patient care and procedural skills. They want someone who can function at a higher level of the very steep learning curve all interns have. And coming from a non-US system can be a disadvantage here, as can not having at least been exposed to the US system through US rotations. So that sort of kills you. No matter how much "better" a foreign path is, it's not going to be of as much "value" to a PD than a domestic program in terms of the job he is hiring you. So again, if you know you want to practice in the US, and you can get into a med school in the US, you need to go to med school in the US. Don't go with personal feelings that Oxford is "Oxford" so it must be better than Joe's No-Name Med school in the US. To a PD, if the folks who come out of Joe's have the clinical background they feel is useful to the job of intern, than the Joe's guy gets the job. Hard to accept when you are in undergrad and everything is objective like higher scores or higher rank is "better". But easy to grasp once you get out and see that someone who pulls their own weight and then some is a better "intern" than someone who is "smarter" on paper, and thus someone you'd rather have on your team.
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