Reflections on International Medical Schools

A lot of the information in this post is based off of forums (SDN, Premed101), friends and Google..and a minor bit from personal experience.  As you've probably gleaned from my previous posts, I was a arts/science kid in undergrad.  So I had a lot of contact with overeager premed and prelaw students.  Unsurprisingly, some of it rubbed off.

One of the biggest questions that usually crops out on the premed forums - for those thinking of applying outside North America for medical school - is "Caribbean vs. Australia vs Ireland vs UK vs Europe vs Asia vs. Etc".  Regardless of where you ultimately decide to go to, you'll be labelled an IMG if you decide to head back to North America - but that's probably best left as the subject of another blog post.  It's no secret that studying where you want to eventually practice is the best plan, but sometimes things don't work out the way you want them to.  That's life.    

Everyone has their reasons for applying outside of Canada/USA. Some want to avoid the MCAT, some because the NA schools can be rather unforgiving about their GPA requirements, some because they didn't get in despite having the stats, etc.

I'm not here to make judgements on that.  Rather, what I want to provide is a 'Pros and Cons List' of what I think these locations encompass.  Remember, these are my opinions - feel free to disagree but please don't get nasty about it. Parts of this post has previously appeared on SDN but since I wrote that post as well...



Caribbean
Popular choices (ie. the Big 4): St. Georges University (SGU), SABA, American University of the Caribbean (AUC), Ross
Apply: Directly to the schools. 
MCAT Requirement: school dependent
Notes: It is predicted that the amount of US residency spots available to IMGs will soon be decreasing as a number of new medical schools have started intake these past few years.  

Pros:

• Rotations in US hospitals
• More focused USMLE prep
• Possibly lower costs than say UK/Australia, especially for cost of living
• Closer to North America (especially for those living on the east coast)

Cons:

• Residency options are rather limited as the US and maybe Canada are part of the few countries that will acknowledge training from the Caribbean
• Stigma (real or imagined)
• Higher fail-out rate 
• Environment conditions (eg. hurricanes; unstable electricity/internet connections)
• Large class sizes (especially at Ross)

Australia   
Popular choices: University of Queensland (UQ), University of Sydney (USyd), University of Melbourne, Flinders University, University of Wollongong (UOW)
Apply via: OzTrekk or GlobaLinks Learning Abroad
MCAT requirement: yes
Notes: It used to be that you were practically guaranteed an internship if you wanted to remain in Australia after graduation, but that is no longer the case (key word: medical tsunami).
[Occasionally, I do blog a bit about the Australian med school experience - check out the med tag.]

Pros:

• Larger possibility of getting residency in other countries
• Low fail-out rate
• University has more of an international reputation (especially the so-called sandstone universities)
• More research opportunities

Cons:

• More difficult to get US clinical experience (unless you're in the UQ-Oschner program); at the other programs, USCE is limited to elective terms (~8 weeks)
• Not much help with USMLE prep 
• School year is off by 6 months (can be an issue when trying to apply for exams and residency)
• High tuition costs (factored in with the strong Australian dollar, this can hurt)

Ireland
Popular choices: Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), University College Cork (UCC), University College Dublin (UCD), Trinity College Dublin (TCD), University of Limerick, National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG)
Apply via: Atlantic Bridge
MCAT requirement: program dependent
Notes: Non-EU students are not guaranteed an internship position 

Pros:

• Larger possibility of getting residency in other countries
• Low fail-out rate
• Less of a disconnect between the school year in North America (as opposed to Australia which is off by half a year)

Cons

• High costs of tuition and living 
• Not much help with USMLE prep 
• More difficult to get US clinical experience

United Kingdom
Popular choices: Barts and the London (QMUL), Edinburgh, Cambridge, Oxford, University of East Anglia
Apply: directly
MCAT requirement: requires the BMAT or UKCAT or GAMSAT so can't use MCAT results
Notes: Admission to UK schools are relatively difficult when compared to those in other countries mentioned in this post.

Pros

• Larger possibility of getting residency in other countries
• Prestige factor (especially at universities such as Oxford/Cambridge)
• Less of a disconnect between the school year in North America (as opposed to Australia which is off by half a year)

Cons

• Not much help with USMLE prep
• More difficult to get US clinical experience