 Are you considering a Caribbean medical school? There is a lot of polarizing noise out there. Stick around for research-based information. For the best medical school personal statement coaching, definitely subscribe and hit the bell so you don't miss a video. So let's start debunking myths. And first quick caveat, I am not endorsing any one school. Most of my students attend U.S. medical schools, but I have had a few successful students that have attended offshore medical schools, the OMS, right? A couple right now, happy as second years. I just want to provide information to arm you with kind of more details, and you can kind of make your own choices as you see fit. Myth one is that the Caribbean is overpopulated with medical school. And so this is true or not true, depending on your perspective. But there has been a substantial growth, about 40%, in the last 20 years, right? Since 2000, there were kind of a handful in 1950s and grew kind of exponentially slowly until now. And they are, for the most part, if not all, for-profit institutions. So that's something to kind of consider, right? Because the bottom line, money is kind of can be, let's say can be at the forefront of decision-making. And sometimes that's good because they keep it lean. They keep kind of services cater to students. And sometimes that is not that great for the student experience, right? They're about 2% of schools that are for-profit in the U.S., so that kind of gives you a stark contrast. Myth two, that the Caribbean schools are all created equal, and they're not. This is a super important point that I want you guys to kind of think about. The way that you are writing or kind of drafting your school lists for U.S. schools, you want to figure out your school list for Caribbean schools if that's a choice that you're going to take on. Because they're not created equal, right? 40% to 50% attrition rate in some schools, too much lower. In others, you want to make sure that you kind of have the information about the student experience, about the academic rigor, and the overall kind of experience that you want to have, doesn't match with what you want to have and what they're offering. In 2006, Dr. Jerry Thornton, Vice President of St. Matthews and Grand Cayman, proclaimed that his school was on par with U.S. medical schools. There are a couple of critics who publish a peer review article on the topic on kind of a deep dive on a few schools. I'll put the bibliographic information below. And so you'll have here that they acknowledge this distinction. The two academic critics, Zantin and Boulet, acknowledge that there is a distinction and assess the education in medical institutions in the Caribbean, country by country. And I'll show you a couple of tables, right? So this table is interesting to kind of see how students stack up regarding the boards of USMLE. First attempt, USMLE, this table, on average, 54% pass on their first attempt, 61% pass in step two, and 88% pass in a step two CS. So in a 15-year study, more than half of students pass in their first attempt for the USMLE. That's interesting to note, but the pass rate is starkly different school by school. So it ranges from 19.4 to 84.4 for step one, 26.3 to 79.7 for step two, and 60.6 to 97.2 for step two CS, CSA. That's interesting because they bolster certain academic and training programs and kind of show the weaknesses of the others. I watched my fellow YouTubes and there is a video that I'm going to link above. And there's a big caveat that I'm learning myself, that I didn't know about whether or not these pass rates are skewed because of who is allowed to take. So not all students are taking it. Maybe they are perhaps taking like a pretest in school before they can sit for these boards. I'm going to link that up here because I thought that he kind of offered a very thoughtful counter argument to the numbers and kind of really thoughtfully synthesizes the numbers and I want to give you as much info as possible. Myth three, getting into a Caribbean medical school is easy. Well, not so much. Here is a table of acceptances with the kind of student stats. And according to the New York Times article that I'm showing you guys below, they are considered second chance medical schools in the sense of for high performing students who maybe didn't do as great on the standard on MCATs, let's say, and so are offered a second opportunity. But by no means these are like still court like all the pre-med courses, all of the rigor that you have expected to kind of encounter in your undergrad. These students are definitely kind of undertaking that rigor. Myth four is that Caribbean schools do more bad than good. And this is the tricky one, right? Because we do have a very stark need, especially in rural places in the U.S. for family practice. A lot of times, and I'll show you the table with the numbers, a lot of times these practitioners from international medical schools are kind of filling that gap. CIMGs, right? Caribbean students are going into family medicine. And so plus and minus, right? If you are going into a more competitive specialty, maybe Caribbean medical schools is definitely not your kind of route to choose just because they don't really place a lot of plastics or cardiology, neuro, all of these. There will be a kind of outlier or a few students, but it's not usually the trend, the norm. A lot of them are going into kind of family practice. So here is a study by Duvier and it revealed that they make up a considerable percentage that practice family medicine. They were trained in Dominica, Mexico, St. Martin, demonstrating that these institutions are kind of helping us fill gaps in our own workforce. Approximately 40% of the family medicine workforce in Florida, New Jersey and New York are kind of filled by students that attend medical school abroad. So here are two tables, about 30,000 IMGs practice family medicine in the US in 2017. And out of the top 20 countries in which family medicine IMG study, countries in the Caribbean make up nine of the 20 within the list. Like undergrad, there are quite a few students who change their specialty during medical school, right? Like you're in it there, you're kind of finally figuring out where your passions truly lie. And so sometimes that can change. And if you kind of pigeonhole yourself to a program that is churning out productive family medicine and practitioners, but you don't want to do that, that's a drawback, right? We also don't want to overlook the cons, the kind of harder aspects of the everyday grind that is going to a Caribbean school. And there are programs that are remedying the situation, which is great. But I wanted to show you this table because students do face obstacles that are notable to mention here. Social isolation. Now with COVID, you want to figure out what the precautions are, how and if they will open in the fall, let's say, change in learning styles. So there's more large lecture halls and less small group practice skills, less emphasis on research, maybe subpar learning facilities. And some schools will have accreditation issues, which is why it is so, so important to do your homework. So main deal, do your homework. You don't want to get into an obscene amount of debt and just come back with crushed dream, right? You want to make sure that this, if you're going this route, that this is the route for you. And yeah, thank you so much for watching. I will kind of copy paste all of the tables and research articles that I found in the description. If you want to talk to me about your personal statement and how I work with students, definitely book your free 15 minute call with me. That is also in the description. Thanks for watching. Hit that like button and I'll see you soon. Thank you.