Atlantic Bridge Irish Medical schools vs. Caribbean Medical schools

[zamtrios]

Im going to be a 20 year old senior in undergrad in the fall in the US, skated through online school because of COVID, 3.9 GPA, 3.8sGPA. Did not learn bio/chem/physics at ALL. Absolutely no point taking the MCAT right now. If I did go the US DO route it would still take me a year or two just to learn everything I need for the MCAT to get a decent score and apply. Also applying to anesthesiologist assistant programs and will probably get accepted to one and its a great gig, but I really want to be a family medicine doctor.

Instead I am considering Atlantic Bridge Irish Medical schools and Caribbean med schools. I think the Atlantic bridge option would actually be really ideal for me because I believe in the 5 year program the first year is somewhat of a review? I probably am not ready science wise to handle Caribbean medical schools at my current state.

Could anyone tell me if the Atlantic bridge program match rates are good for primary care specialities? Do any of the schools teach for the USMLE like the Caribbean schools do, or do they teach towards making people doctors in Ireland? They both seem to be roughly the same price, but living in Ireland is prob better than living in the Caribbean. I also believe the Irish schools don't weed people out.

I know people will say I need to exhaust a couple cycles of applying DO, but I really want to get started towards my goal and am willing to take a risk for it.

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[lockstitch]

I can’t speak about Ireland but I can address some of your more incidental points. “No point” to take the MCAT: plenty of people take the MCAT without having covered that content in university, and many years after graduating college. Plenty of them also do well. What makes you think you can’t be one of them? When you say Carib, I believe you mean you’d be limiting yourself to schools for which you don’t need the MCAT? That will basically mean you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel. Sure, you’re willing to take some risks to become a doctor ASAP, but to risk harming yourself with the conditions and the potential adverse outcomes, when you could just spend a few more years to do the prereqs/etc and lay the best foundation for your own success as a doctor? What’s the rush? Have you shadowed, how do you know you only want to do FM? Going to Ireland will not mean you don’t have to do bio/chem/physics, mind you.

You’re presuming people will tell you to apply DO—I assume you think your high GPA is ”fake” due to Covid online schooling conditions? Otherwise it’s good for a US MD app especially with a commensurate MCAT. I think you have more to think about than just “well, won’t Ireland/Carib give me what I want earlier?” Why are you in a hurry? Don‘t want gap years? Don’t want to take the risk of doing prereqs and failing to get in to a US programme? Maybe look in the nontrad forum and see that it is really okay not to go straight through, and in fact it can help you. I’m not saying you can’t go offshore, I just hope you do it for better reasons than simply taking the way that looks easy now, because it’s possible that it won’t turn out to be the easier way in the long view.

 

[voxveritatisetlucis]

You’re 20.

Take the time to do things right. That means USMD or DO

To answer your question, match rates for both will still be significantly lower than Us schools.

 

[zamtrios]

I can’t speak about Ireland but I can address some of your more incidental points. “No point” to take the MCAT: plenty of people take the MCAT without having covered that content in university, and many years after graduating college. Plenty of them also do well. What makes you think you can’t be one of them? When you say Carib, I believe you mean you’d be limiting yourself to schools for which you don’t need the MCAT? That will basically mean you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel. Sure, you’re willing to take some risks to become a doctor ASAP, but to risk harming yourself with the conditions and the potential adverse outcomes, when you could just spend a few more years to do the prereqs/etc and lay the best foundation for your own success as a doctor? What’s the rush? Have you shadowed, how do you know you only want to do FM? Going to Ireland will not mean you don’t have to do bio/chem/physics, mind you.

You’re presuming people will tell you to apply DO—I assume you think your high GPA is ”fake” due to Covid online schooling conditions? Otherwise it’s good for a US MD app especially with a commensurate MCAT. I think you have more to think about than just “well, won’t Ireland/Carib give me what I want earlier?” Why are you in a hurry? Don‘t want gap years? Don’t want to take the risk of doing prereqs and failing to get in to a US programme? Maybe look in the nontrad forum and see that it is really okay not to go straight through, and in fact it can help you. I’m not saying you can’t go offshore, I just hope you do it for better reasons than simply taking the way that looks easy now, because it’s possible that it won’t turn out to be the easier way in the long view.

You're right in that the most straight forward path would be studying pre-reqs again and doing the MCAT. I honestly just don't want to wait for a couple years so I am looking at other options. I decided I definitely will not be doing Caribbean. I am now looking at Irish med schools and other international schools where I would be comfortable moving to and living there.

I have shadowed family medicine doctors and I really enjoyed it so I would be happy becoming a family med doctor/GP in any country even if it means leaving the US and not coming back.

 

[FrustratedFamDoc]

If you've got the $, you'll find a "school" that will gladly take it and placate your dreams, regardless of prior academic achievement. You will almost certainly never get a US residency going this route, and will have to really give international programs a GOOD reason to take you on. Most likely, these programs will be way bottom of the barrel, your training will be worse than poor and you will hate your life.

I have rotated through residency programs in NY that are almost entirely foreign grads from the top schools in their home country. Many were previous attendings in very prestigious fields in their home countries, but they wanted to come to the USA.

They were treated horribly, and their training was poor. They looked like they were ready to give up on life on a daily basis. The chief resident actually tried by jumping off the 8th floor of the parking deck. He was saved, but was successful months later.

Poor training usually = physician with substandard skills that could have a difficult time passing in-training exams and boards. No boards, no accreditation with insurance, and unemployable in pretty much every traditional system. I hope you don't have a lot of inexcusable loans at this point or you're SCREWED.

So where I'm going with this... don't go to the Hollywood School of Medicology, and expect any degree of success. It will fail, you will not receive the postgraduate training you need, and if you have any loans, they will be very large and will destroy your life, unless you have someone to pay them off or land a big money job.

 

[Medstart108]

Im going to be a 20 year old senior in undergrad in the fall in the US, skated through online school because of COVID, 3.9 GPA, 3.8sGPA. Did not learn bio/chem/physics at ALL. Absolutely no point taking the MCAT right now. If I did go the US DO route it would still take me a year or two just to learn everything I need for the MCAT to get a decent score and apply. Also applying to anesthesiologist assistant programs and will probably get accepted to one and its a great gig, but I really want to be a family medicine doctor.

Instead I am considering Atlantic Bridge Irish Medical schools and Caribbean med schools. I think the Atlantic bridge option would actually be really ideal for me because I believe in the 5 year program the first year is somewhat of a review? I probably am not ready science wise to handle Caribbean medical schools at my current state.

Could anyone tell me if the Atlantic bridge program match rates are good for primary care specialities? Do any of the schools teach for the USMLE like the Caribbean schools do, or do they teach towards making people doctors in Ireland? They both seem to be roughly the same price, but living in Ireland is prob better than living in the Caribbean. I also believe the Irish schools don't weed people out.

I know people will say I need to exhaust a couple cycles of applying DO, but I really want to get started towards my goal and am willing to take a risk for it.

If you have a 3.9 GPA just self study, write the MCAT and you'll get into a MD school. The issue with Irish and UK is that while the medical school isn't hard to get in and you don't need MCAT, working as a doctor in Ireland/UK isn't great. The training is often several years longer than it is in the US and physician pay is much lower, the average GP makes 80k pounds in the UK.