@bedevilled ben Could you elaborate a bit on that? St. Georges said they have a 98% Step 1 pass rate! I also saw a list with tons of residencies. Granted, most were internal medicine, family medicine, etc. but still, I mean that's not bad!
The Step 1 pass rate tells you nothing about how many students are lost in MS1 and MS2 to attrition, which is when most students drop out of the program. The attrition rate is hard to pin down for reasons that I've discussed previously relating to rolling admissions and deceling classes, but I think 15-20% is a reasonable guess. That's still a lot, 1/5 students, give or take. And SGU has one of the lowest attrition rates in the Caribbean, which brings to me to my next point....
Not all Caribbean schools are created equal. Lumping SGU and Ross in with Windsor and St Matthews is pretty useless, as the schools are vastly different in terms of pass rates, residency placement, tuition, and accreditation in the US.
How hard exactly is it to become a licensed US physician through the Caribbean schools?
How can I answer that? It's different for everybody. Speaking only for myself, it's been no picnic, and I've only just started the residency application process. If you work very hard, do well on Step 1, work even harder during clerkships, network, manage your expectations, apply broadly and intelligently, have multiple backups, and have an eye out for problems in your way and are proactive in fixing them, you probably have a very good chance of getting a residency. Most people have trouble with doing at least one of those things, otherwise they probably wouldn't be going to the Caribbean in the first place.
I always chuckle a little when I see students so preoccupied with what they need to do to
just barely get into a Caribbean medical school, while totally discounting all of the painful hard work, time, and effort it takes to actually get
through the program and
into a residency.
