Why so many matches for SGU?!?!

[Girth]

If it is so hard to get into residencies as a IMG or FMG, and if Caribbean schools suck so bad, why do so many students from SGU match to residencies like neurology, anesthesiology, radiology, and internal medicine? If you look up there match list on their website, you'll notice that a large number of students match into somewhat decent residencies. So why is that? Any advice is appreciated.

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[deleted407021]

It's a complex little puzzle that's been hammered out in a few recent threads. Look around for those. Very informative.

A few things: Those specialties aren't particularly competitive at this time. One can find a match list at any program, US or otherwise, and see plenty of IM, anes and rads matches. Additionally, these Caribbean programs do a good job skirting around the fact that alarming numbers of people who begin as M1s never graduate or match or even take Step 1 of the USMLE. Finally, it's my understanding that potentially many of the matches you see aren't people geared to graduate and instead are people who had to defer and year or reapply because they didn't even SOAP anywhere the year(s) prior to being placed on the ostensibly official match list.

 

[Pagan FutureDoc]

0 in optho and rads
1 in neurosurg
2 in ortho

Out of a class of 1500-2000 I'd expect better

 

[Dr. Death]

Because they use the search function

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

If it is so hard to get into residencies as a IMG or FMG, and if Caribbean schools suck so bad, why do so many students from SGU match to residencies like neurology, anesthesiology, radiology, and internal medicine? If you look up there match list on their website, you'll notice that a large number of students match into somewhat decent residencies. So why is that? Any advice is appreciated.

Like it was mentioned above these residencies aren't really competative at this mement in time. Also a lot of these programs are at low tier or not so good places. Just because somewhere is a good medical school =\= good residency in X specialty, as pre-meds it is impossible for us to o ow what is a good match and what is not. Even then a few students will break into competative places just because there are so many applicants from SGU. A good measure is how many truly competative specialties are represented, which, as the post above points out, is only a handful out of the hundreds and hundreds of SGU grads applying through the match. That isn't even going into attrition, etc.

 

[redferrari]

Maybe because the media that controls our lives knows that SGU grads who match to neuro will one day make outstanding tabloid fodder...

*That is laden with sarcasm by the way*

 

[ChrisMack390]

They only seem like large numbers because the class sizes are unfathomable.

 

[Goro]

Another descriptor for these specific programs is "malignant".

They're also mostly preliminary (dead end, 1 year) programs in less than desirable locations.

If it is so hard to get into residencies as a IMG or FMG, and if Caribbean schools suck so bad, why do so many students from SGU match to residencies like neurology, anesthesiology, radiology, and internal medicine? If you look up there match list on their website, you'll notice that a large number of students match into somewhat decent residencies. So why is that? Any advice is appreciated.