Two Alternative Caribbean Options to the Costly Saint George's 

Number 2:  American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine 

This institution is just behind Saint George's University in drop-out rates and scores a solid 13% over the 4-year period.  Students who enroll in American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine are able to enjoy a fast-track route into hospitals in Florida and New York during their 3rd and 4th years and can even shadow during their second years in US hospitals to network with more doctors.  This school is less costly as well compared with Saint George's and will average $170,000 with class sizes at around 1,000 per semester.  IMGs generally populate a lot of the hospitals in New York and Southern Florida so it is a good stepping stone for some of these students to get an interview. 

From my conversations during my electives, I found out that this school is consistently expanding and absorbing smaller Caribbean medicals that collapsed.  Several of my peers stated that these schools as a whole are just considered to be money-making machines and will accept anyone as long as their checks clear.  The school does make some efforts to help top-students match into clinical rotations but with some many students that are able to start during their first years of school, the drop out rate during the first 2 years would be much closer to 50% according to the students.  

Another aspect of AUC and Saint George's is that both institutions are focused on teaching for the USMLE Step Exams. This is a good feature, to an extent, but does jeopardize some of the experience that students will not get.  During rounding, students were able to recall some minute details buried away in First Aid but when it came to Patient interviews and Physical Examinations, the lack of experience was evident. Students would not be comfortable interacting with patients and attending physicians would notice that instantly. This can affect letters of recommendation and make it even harder to get back to the States.  

READ Rebounding From Medical School Rejection

Number 3:  Ross University 

This is another school that I am quite familiar with because of the teachings of Dr. Conrad Fisher, the author of many Mastering the Boards series that you will tout around daily during your upper years of medicine. He is affiliated with Ross University School of medicine  and provides classes to students trying to master the material for their Step examinations.  The drop-out rate for Ross is much higher than the first two and averages nearly 50% a year. Students have a chance to get back into the US to do clinical electives during their 3rd and 4th years but the contracts are much more sparse with US hospitals than Saint George's or AUC.  Ross is also more costly than AUC and can run $180,000 in total.  Ross also has class sizes of over 750 per semester.   

The built-in USMLE-Prep course is beneficial because they can be costly expenses if you have to buy them yourself in a non-sponsoring school.  The fact that it is so hard for Ross students to even get back into the States to do clinical rotations makes the probability to Match much poorer than the other two institutions.