@shanelowney
Are you a US citizen or permanent resident?
Where you plan to practice medicine after graduation?
All Saints University Saint Vincent is a new Caribbean medical school that offers 4 and 5 year entry programs. This school is BIG unknown. Although All Saint University School of Medicine was founded in 2006, the St. Vincent and the Grenadines was cleaved off from the main university campus in 2019. This makes this schools a BIG unknown with no track record.
WARNING: All Saints University College of Medicine is not accredited by the Caribbean Accreditation Authority for Education in Medicine and other Health Professions (CAAMHP)
Caribbean med schools are all for-profit institutions and their business model relies on a large percentage of their incoming students to fail out/quit before those students reach the clinical portion of their medical education. Why? Because these schools simply do not have sufficient resources or placements to accommodate all their students.
Caribbean students face very long odds of matching back to the US or Canada. Fewer than 40% do. Grads of foreign medical schools need much higher USMLE scores than do US grads to be considered for same residency programs because many PDs simply filter out all applications from non-US program graduates. Grads from foreign medical schools tend to end up in chiefly FM, IM or pathology in less desirable locations (medically underserved rural and inner city residency programs).
Before deciding to attend I would suggest you do some research since not all foreign
medical schools are recognized and you may not be able to get a medical license in the US.
- Check the List of approved schools by the Medical Board of California to see if your school—and the campus you plan to attend-- is recognized. Also check the Texas Medical Board List of Schools Whose Graduates Have Demonstrated
Substantial Equivalence of Their Education
https://www.mbc.ca.gov/Applicants/Medical_Schools/Schools_Recognized.aspx
http://www.tmb.state.tx.us/idl/A9AFA127-082F-6C6D-1421-B5BEDB9C3E02
Unless your school is on this list chances are you won’t be eligible for a medical license in most states.
{NOTE: I can’t find this school listed on either the CA or TX approved list, but you should check for yourself.}
-
Ask the school to show you their USMLE pass rate for US citizens for past 5 years. In order to be eligible to participate in the federal student loan program, foreign medical schools must collect this data and forward it to the US Dept of Education. If your school won’t share this information with you or says it doesn’t have this information–this should be a red flag.
-
Ask the school to show you its Match List of US citizen graduates for the last 3-5 years. Again if the school refuses to do so or says it doesn’t have this information–this a major red flag. It’s a sign this school is NOT successful sending its grads back to the US for residency.
And some educational reading–
https://www.ecfmg.org/resources/guidance-on-medical-school-selection.html
https://www.iwnsvg.com/2018/04/26/university-denies-forcing-student-to-leave-svg-for-dominica/
https://www.idealmedicalcare.org/ugly-truth-caribbean-medical-schools/
The general advice given to pre-meds is that they should complete 3 application cycles to US MD and DO schools, with time allowed between each application cycle to improve their app, before attempting to attend med school in the Caribbean.