What happens if you do poorly in Irish med schools?

[ruffryder]

Hi, my dad has a friend who graduated from an Irish school and is working in Canada with his own skin care clinic. He tells me to not go to Trinity because they are really strict on student performance, and readily puts students on probation or "kicks" them out, based on their high standards. I know every medical school has a level of standard which students are expected to meet. However, has anyone heard similar things about Trinity having an especially higher bar?

Thanks.

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[leorl]

Heheh. hmm. I don't know about that...but I would say that I'm not the best Trinity student out there. And I have not seen this happen. People do get put on probabation or made to repeat a year, but this is after having failed an exam twice (because you usually have two chances to pass the exam with the supplementals in September) or even three times. I don't believe that is an unreasonable standard to have. It is hard to do extremely well, but no harder than the other Irish schools. There definitely is no grade inflation here though. While I'm not the best student, I've done fine enough to get by year-to-year, and I have not had to bust my balls to do so. Trinity's a great place. You and other applicants will be fine.

The people who run into problems generally are the ones with extenuating circumstances (i.e. sickness, poorer command of English, etc.) Americans usually do fine, although there are a few who have to do the supplementals every year.

 

[ruffryder]

Thanks for the information leorl. The person who gave me this info was an old Irish med school graduate, so the info might be outdated. Also, I should mention that he did not attend Trinity, but he went to RCSI. So to all those who are considering Trinity, don't let this post mislead you, because the information that I received has no real backing. I just wanted to throw the question out there.

 

[leorl]

Just to add, on some rotations (ie. your core ones like Psych, Paeds, GP, etc.) the heads of departments will call you in and bollock you out of it if you're dumb enough to not attend. So I guess they do keep track of attendance in important rotations like that, and if they're not happy with your record, they may make you repeat a portion of the rotation or something. If you skip a couple days here and there it doesn't matter, but if you skip like weeks of it, it does. But really, the people who fall down that path deserve it ... You can't learn medicine if you don't show up !