What path is best for a Caribbean student wanting to eventually practice in America

go4cornell
Sun, 17 Apr 2011 19:13:40 +0000

If you can’t get into a us school you should go to med school in the country you want to live in most AFTER the US, because foreign graduates have as hard of a time getting into residency as medical school.



I know that foreign graduates still face challenges in gaining residencies but I don’t think it’s as bad as med school is it? I mean there are about 100-200 spots in all for international students applying to med school in the U.S. and the majority of them are taken by Canadians. However when you look at matchings for offshore U.S. med schools such as Ross and SGU quite a good number of their students match into competitive specialties. Websites such as [2011 Ross University Residency](http://www.rossu.edu/medical-school/residencyappointments.cfm) and https://baysgu35.sgu.edu/ERD/2010/ResidPost.nsf/BYPGY?OpenView&RestrictToCategory=PGY1&Count=-1 illustrate this. Granted a sizable portion of them are things like Family Practice and Internal Medicine, but isn’t this the norm for American medical schools as well? And I’ve also heard that around 25%-30% of persons in the medical field in America are IMGs/FMGs (Is this claim correct?). Don’t get me wrong, I know you have to work very hard and your board exams are extremely important (i.e. USMLE’s Step I, II, etc.) but it seems there are quite a number of spots available for those who graduate from foreign schools, right? Or wrong? Please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.