BUT if you have a 505+ MCAT and 3.4+ GPA WITH grade replacement (<3.0 without grade replacement), I feel like you can succeed at St. George or Ross Medical schools if you work your tail off.
It's hard to understand what makes you genuinely believe this when you aren't a medical student nor have you attended either of these programs. I'm sure you are offering your own opinion on this matter because your colleagues from RUSOM strongly advocate attending the school as a last measure. Hence, why you gravitate towards the words, "I feel like you can succeed" rather than saying, "They informed me that anything is possible..." - at St. George or Ross Medical Schools...
It's precisely because the amount of work you put into the school will not be proportional to the amount of effort the school will have invested in you. Students attend these schools with the mentality that they are going to work their tail off and beat the "reefer kids" in their class. These so called "reefer kids" can be counted on one hand, that is so that out of a class of 130 they don't actually exist. It is not a matter of how hard you are willing to work when you arrive at the school, it is about performance.
People immature enough to highlight human effort as the most important variable to performance are the ones who have a history of under performance in most of their classes. Performance is an elusive category that only becomes less illusory when we reach certain competencies. Then we discover niche areas that we never saw when basic effort wasn't applied as a basic ingredient to start off the entire process.
Everyone here is more than willing to call themselves "motivated individuals" who are willing to make sacrifices, however those sacrifices are inconsequential if you are investing it in a framework that doesn't value you as an individual. U.S. Medical students spend money and dedicate time to review with Goljan, Pathoma, Robbins, UWorld, First Aid, or Kaplan because they feel like they are a special investment and have the chance to have the opportunity of a life time. Ross University doesn't trust you to take the Step I examination without running through the NBME gauntlet.
Caribbean students have spent their money buying inflated real estate and food products at Ross University Island and for the most part are teaching themselves the curriculum the entire step of the way. I know that the island is Dominica. I am calling it Ross University Island because the journey can be an unpleasant ride with you being unsure of the outcome at the end of it. The high point likely being the fact that the ride misleadingly ends back in Miami (Miramar) Florida before kicking off another series of fun rotations in the U.S.
This brings me to the importance of having a solid infrastructure going into medical school. Most undergraduate students don't have an adequate infrastructure going into medical school which is why the analogy of drinking water from a fire hose is accurate and doesn't do the analogy justice. RUSOM "banks" on these students and then proceeds to systematically weed them out with a variety of oppressors I'm sure the students never saw coming.
If you are going to make a huge investment please do not give that money to RUSOM or DeVry.
@gonnif Wrote a post in pre-medical regarding the volatile nature of receiving rejections during the winter months and paints a very real emotional portrait of the conditions that informed students come under when they decide to apply to these schools. You will still see some people like {the argus} be a strong advocate for Caribbean outcomes.
I believe that my entire experience made me skeptical of how effective we are in educating prospective students on this site. I think that there is too much of a naive and premature attitude regarding giving advice through a "n=1 and that n is me". There are more inquisitive approaches that we simply do not utilize either through lack of knowledge, lack of trying, or from a lack of insight. I feel like in order to truly dissuade students during these cold winter months, we need to consistently give advice of a higher premium than "I know like 100 general practitioners who became doctors through RUSOM... apply today!" because students are aware of the scruples of such a school but still are naive enough to believe that it will serve their purposes as a mean to an end. Until you have walked to Golgotha, you have been living in Paradise.