Cost of Caribbean medical schools in comparison to American schools

***update: the cost continually rises every year. please note the values on this post have most likely increased****

Relatively speaking, most of these Carib schools are a lot cheaper than American schools and that is one reason why people may choose to go abroad. But is it really worth it? Here are the numbers and you can decide for yourself. (Note: this is for tuition only! Fees and insurance not included in final amounts.)

The total cost of tuition after 4 years,

Saba: $98,500
Ross: $165,150
AUC: $169,550 (AUC just raised tuition 6/26/11)
St. George's: $205,163



Average cost of US public schools:  $174,172
Average cost of US private schools: $175,588


St. George's not looking like a great place to go considering it costs the same as if you were going to a private, Ivy-league, city school. And Saba is so much less expensive because American students are not eligible for federal loans. They have to either pay out of pocket or use private loans with high interest rates, and this brings me to my next point-- I realize federal loans are there to make it easier for students to pay for their education, but I hate how schools drive up the price based on how much the government is willing to dish out for loans. We end up paying A LOT more in the end. All med schools should be priced around Saba. If you've got cash, I'd recommend going here to save a lot of $ and the quality of the education is no different from AUC or St. George's.

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!

I don't have much else to say, except eat up and be merry!
Also, go Patriots!

A night at the hospital

I pulled pretty much an all-nighter Friday night and before you start thinking, right on, it is sadly due to a grim situation. It was 12:30 by the time I got into bed and I just could not fall asleep. After what seemed like 5 minutes of bliss, my mom woke me up at 2 a.m. asking if I could go to the hospital with her. My grandfather has been sick the last few days and on this particular night, he contracted uncontrollable hiccups and was vomiting. My mom is a doctor and for the last week she's been afraid that my grandfather has cancer. He's lost a considerable amount of weight and it's been nearly impossible to get him to eat anything at all. His late night call only reaffirmed my mom's worst fears.

I drove to pick up my grandfather and then we all went to the emergency room. An emergency room at 2:30 in the morning is such an odd place to be. The whole city is pretty much shut down and dark at this point of the night, but once we arrived to the ER, it was strangely alive, for a lack of a better term. There was a bunch of loud, drunk, young people (it is a Friday night, after all) waiting for their drunk/roofied friends and significant others. There were night guards milling around and joking, and others making coffee, talking, and eating at the cafe area near by. It felt like any other place but a hospital. I was brought back to reality, however, when we witnessed one of the more somber sites of the evening. A woman walked into the ER sobbing because she was just informed her son had been in a car accident and in critical condition.

My mom and I waited quietly and my grandfather continued his ominous hiccuping. He had the hiccups on/off for the last 36 hours and it was because of this sign that my mom felt there was something seriously wrong with his gastrointestinal tract. An hour went by and they finally admitted him. We soon found out there was only one doctor working the shift, responsible for all the patients who came in, and I knew I was in for a very long night. The nurse conducted a urinalysis and blood work, and my grandfather's results came back normal. We waited until 4:30 a.m. for him to get a CT scan of his abdomen and it was 7:00 a.m. before the one working doctor read and reported his results to us. One tumor the "size of a pool ball" grew next to his duodenum of the small intestines and obstructed his digestive tract. My mom sure knows her ish.

Not that this post is all bad news though, because things have been looking up since then. My grandfather had a biopsy done yesterday and I am happy to report that the doctors found the tumor to be benign. They are going to try some pills to see if they can reduce the size of the growth and if that doesn't work, he'll be having surgery to remove it asap. Thankfully my grandpa has been doing pretty well in the hospital overall, but his only problem currently is that he is super hungry. He hasn't been allowed to eat for three days now.

And my thoughts I'll be taking away from this experience?

Only that I can't imagine having to deal with this stuff on a daily basis. Yet here I am, prepared to go to med school in a month for 4 long years and for what? Strangely, to try to get to this very point, dealing with all the same situations, but trying to do it from the other side.

The Packing/Shopping List

It's never too early to start thinking about what to pack on my extended trip to St. Maarten, right?
Wrong.
It's still far too early. Well, at least for me anyway.
There's still another month and half and I've got Thanksgiving and Christmas to worry about, people!
And if you've been reading my blog, you know by now that I'm completely jobless and spend most of my days doing nothing productive. Therefore I can start the packing and shopping for my trip a week or two before I actually have to leave because I will have all the hours of the day to do this, right?
But, nooooo, I don't get the luxury to procrastinate.

Due to the unfortunate circumstance that I live at home with my OCD-driven, semi-neurotic mother, I haven't heard the end of "Make a list! Make a list!"for two weeks now.  So here it goes and let me first state clearly: this is solely to placate my mother's incessant demands of my making a list.

The List:
Clothing/Footwear/Accessories 
Jeans
Shorts
Skirts
Shirts
Couple of dresses
Bras
Socks
Undies
Sandals
Sneakers
Heels
Rain Boots
Rain Coat
Umbrella
Select Jewelry
Sunglasses
Belts
Red Sox Hat

Hygiene/Beauty-Related Objects
Toothbrush
Toothpaste
Floss
Mouth Wash
Contact Lenses
Shampoo/Conditioner
Razor and blades
Deodorant
CK1 Perfume
Lotion
Hair Brush
Hair Straightener
Hair elastics
Makeup

Kitchen Things
Pan
Pot
Silverware
Plates
Bowls
Sponges

Misc.
Shower curtain and rings (dorms do not come with these!!!)
Ethernet Cable
Flash Drive
Alarm/Clock Radio battery powered
MacBook Pro and adapter
iPod
Bug Poison (I'm on the first floor and supposedly my dorm may have ants!)
Towels


Edit: I will be adding more to this list as I think of more things I'm going to need



Related articles

• Scrub-a-Dub Dub Scrubs! (medschoolcaribstyle.com) 

Some Breaking News: AUC is Tripling the Bandwidth!

Over the last month, many AUC students have taken to the boards of valuemd to vent out their internet-related grievances. The internet is slow, everything takes forever to load, and students are having trouble watching the Kaplan videos necessary for USMLE preparation.  Of course, as someone who will be arriving to the island in less than two months, I've been growing increasingly concerned over this situation, but I'm thankful to write that the issue has been resolved!

The administration heard the cries and responded.
They are upgrading the bandwidth from 10 mbps to 30 mbps!

Congrats to all those who petitioned and wrote in emails and complaints to the administration, now it makes life that much easier. I'm just happy to know my skype will be working fine once I get there.

Apparently I've got Required Reading

Ah yes. This brings back fond memories of summertime in high school.  Somehow we were always supposed to read like 4 books, fill out that huge packet of math problems and even write a short essay or two by the time school resumed in September. August was never a fun month for me.  But required reading in medical school when peeps haven't even set foot in a classroom in years? That's tough. I've been out of school for a year and half now and I can't even imagine what it's like for those people who are like 30, married with kids coming to the island who currently have a full-time job.... and... yea... I feel like a jackass.  After writing that last sentence, I realize I shouldn't even be complaining.

I stopped working and now I spend my free-time obsessing over fantasy football and go on TV marathons of 24 with my boyfriend. Yea... clearly far too busy to read one book spanning 304 pages. Nothing I can't get done in 2 months.

Cover via Amazon                                 

The book we have to read is called "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" by Mary Roach and it looks like it has a lot of great reviews and is "uproariously funny." The author describes the productive roles cadavers have been used for and even includes a chapter examining cannibalism. Mmmm yummy.

Why require us to read this book? In conjunction with the anatomy department, the Student Judiciary Committee (SJC) believes this is a good way to help us get into the mindset of becoming medical school students. For many of us, this will be our  first encounter with a cadaver and the SJC hopes this book will be an enjoyable introduction to the privilege of dissecting a human body. Once classes begin, we will be broken down into small groups to discuss this book and participation will constitute a whopping 1% of our first block lab grade.

Related articles

• What I've gotten out of "Stiff" so far- 75 pages in (medschoolcaribstyle.com)

Some Info on AUC Housing and Dorm Pictures

The dorms, or I should say apartments since that is really what they are, are reserved for first semester and fifth semester medical students. Although, I have read recent accounts that because AUC has been increasing its class sizes, the school has been accommodating most of its first semester students and leaving the fifth semies out in the cold.

It cost $5400/semester for a single bedroom
and $4600/semester for a double

All rooms come with kitchen, bathroom, furnished living space, and bedroom. If you're interested in the floor plans you can go ahead and click here.

Going to med school is stressful enough, but going to med school in another country? Whoa. So the fact that you can have some piece of mind about where you're living more than justifies the price-tag of the dorms. Not to mention you can get to know the people you will be spending time with for the next two years. Other perks of the dorms include:
–24-hour power because the school has backup generators (the island sometime loses power)
–The school itself was built to withstand category-5 hurricanes (safe)
–The rooms are already wired for internet and cable tv (yay)
– And of course you have the ability to keep that AC on alllll day without having to worry about paying an expensive electric bill.

I'll be living on the first floor and I hear there are may be a couple problems. I've read that sometimes ants can invade so buying bug poison is a must and a simple solution to deal with this problem. Also, when it rains excessively, apparently dorms can have water seep in through the crack between the floor and the door.... so I may also need to invest in a stopper to go under my door. We'll see if this is an actual issue first.

I found some pictures. Courtesy of Benji Ho's Blog Diary of a Caribbean Med Student

Related articles

• Pictures of my AUC Dorm Room (medschoolcaribstyle.com)

I got a spot in the DORMS for first semester! And it's a single ;)

Disaster averted. There's nothing quite as nerve-wracking as thinking you have a place to live in a foreign country during medical school to only find out that may not actually be true.

Considering I was probably the first student accepted for the Jan 2011 class (I got accepted way back in July) I KNEW I was going to get a dorm and I figured might as well go all out and try to secure one of the few singles available to incoming students.  After I sent my housing request form in the beginning of August, I contented myself with the thought of having a nice, cool, ocean-view single room for my first semester of medical school.

Month after month passed and I soon realized I hadn't heard a word about my rooming situation on the island. So I called one of the AUC enrollment managers and asked when I would find out about housing and he told me I would hear back a month before classes begin. Alrighty then. I felt better and put the subject out of my mind.... but then I got the call two weeks ago.

A man from AUC called asking if I planned on living in the dorms.
"Uh...yes... I sent in my housing request form all they way back in August." Dread building.
"Oh, we never received your housing deposit of $1650."
WHAT?!?!?! (I didn't actually yell this) "I didn't even know I was supposed to send in a deposit."
"Did you ever get the email?"
Obviously hell no I didn't, otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation, mister! And I get all my damn emails on my phone and I will not have my housing situation jeopardized because of the incompetency of you admissions people!!! "No I'm sorry, but I never got an email."
"Well we had sent you an email."
Well f-you, no you didn't because it would have been on my phone like every other email I've received from AUC! "Yeah, sorry, I never got an email."
"There are about 20 spots left so we will send you the email now and you need to try and send us your housing deposit as soon as possible."

With that I hung up the phone and I got the email one second later. I printed out the forms, filled them out and sent them out by the next day. Feeling angry about this situation I quickly took to my email and sent a message to the housing coordinator explaining that I applied for a single 4 months ago and no one ever sent me ANYTHING asking for ANYTHING.  She replied saying she understood and would wait for my deposit.

And yesterday I got an email from her. I got a room, and not only that.... it's a single,  room 110!!!!! wooooooo!!!! Back in paradise.

And again, disaster averted.

Exactly 50 more days till I move to St. Maarten

Time's been speeding up and I'm starting to feel nervous/excited for this new chapter in my life. I'm not happy about leaving my friends, family, and my boyfriend in particular, and I know once I get to the island, most of my life will probably be in a library or my room.... or perhaps on a nice beach..... no, no! In a library! Face in book, studying hard! Very hard!

The last few days on valuemd I've been reading that most students (past and present) consider the school (and all the Caribbean schools actually) to be pretty much a "do-it-yourself" type of institution.  However the more I read of other students experiences with the school, it seems that it isn't as do-it-yourself  as one might think. Of course you must go to lectures, lab, and get the slides, and you have to do plenty of studying on your own but after classes everyday there are TA tutoring sessions available to all the students to go over all the information of a class on that day. That seems like a nice resource to me, especially if I'm seriously struggling in a class, but I can't help but feel sick with the thought of going to class all day, then going to anatomy lab, and then going home to study, but only to return a couple hours later for these TA sessions, followed by even more studying at home. Yuck and I will have to do the same thing the following day FOR TWO YEARS.

Now I'm freaking out thinking about this.

 I'll be able to write more on the subject once I get there, but for now I'll just content myself for having another 50 days to relax and do what I want with my soon-to-be-gone freedom.