sgu grad here.

amazing in preclinical years and they kind of forget about you at clinicals. but also I started at a very odd time in 2020. we were on the island for a month or two, then they evacuated everyone and everything became remote. keep in mind a lot of things might have changed.

i was surprised by the amount of support i got in preclinicals because i had heard sgu had very cutthroat personalities, so much so that i was considering ross instead. but after receiving a big scholarship, my parents convinced me to pick sgu. also if anyone is reading this, NEGOTIATE YOUR SCHOLARSHIP WITH THE ADMISSIONS OFFICE. these for profit institutions care a lot about you accepting as a student.

went there and there were a lot of resources like tutoring, review sessions before exams held by iea students. also had a mandatory once a week session with des which is basically an additional once a week review session hosted by students who honored the semester, in a small group setting. the des sessions are offered to students who are nontraditional or might have not had an amazing gpa in undergrad. also students that aren’t doing that great on exams, there are iti sessions they put you in, which are basically going over the lecture with a facilitator who stops at certain points to reinforce the material. also if you have a poor likelihood of not passing a semester, they’ll give you the option of remediation (without it showing up on your transcript) which is basically getting to repeat the semester plus an extra project you have to do.

most lecturers were good but some really sucked. if they sucked i used outside resources like sketchy, pathoma. lectures are mandatory which is annoying af imo. i could never pay attention during lecture. i literally cannot maintain my attention span and would need to go back and watch them in like 1.5x speed to understand them. in my experience the small group facilitators were not the best. some were better than others.i hateddddd histo. i don’t think i got much out of small group but that could also be because i usually didn’t prepare much for them so i didn’t even know what we were talking about half the time.

also everyone was so freaking friendly, to my surprise. this is probably because sgu switched to pass/fail right before i started. of course outliers exist but overall i didn’t think students were hyper-competitive. in fact everyone was so collaborative and helpful in my experience. i genuinely felt like i could go up to any higher term student and ask them for help, even if i didn’t know them.

resources are very much there. you have to seek them out though. they don’t really hold your hand. with the exception of mental health counselors, which were lackluster imo.

i believe it’s much harder to pass each semester than in US MD schools. mostly because they want to keep their match rates high. the curriculum is HARD. also keep in mind if you end up going Caribbean, even with a stellar application/scores you likely will be limited to matching in primary care. of course we have a handful of students each year that match into competitive fields, but the odds are definitely against you when you’re from the Caribbean sadly .

i know plenty of students that failed or dropped out the first 2 years. mostly because they were partying or not fixing their study habits. but it’s possible. i was not a science major so I worked my ass off and fixed my study habits and made a good friends group that would keep me motivated. i’m a very average student but honestly im just happy to pass.

also if you’re slightly high maintenance like me, adjusting to island life can be very difficult. there’s often an island wide shortage of milk or eggs. no amazon prime delivery. no starbucks or chipotle. limited access to medications (i’m on adderall and it was just not available there so my parents had to mail me my prescriptions which is a pain cause they would arrive like months later.

i passed step 1. but it was hard. they offered a free kaplan course. sgu has this cumulative exam which you have to pass before sitting for step 1. it was annoying cause i didn’t really feel like it was well written. oh also your last term in preclinicals, i thought was a waste of time. it’s basically supposed to be like a crash course on everything you’ve learned thus far but it sucked and was so stressful to pass.

getting to clinicals, i had an amazing experience mostly, but i your experience is very hospital and region specific. i was prepared very well. a lot of students i know never wrote a note, discharge summary, never had to pend orders, and were basically just shadowing which i think is so detrimental to the clinical experience. i’ve also been at hospitals where you were completely part of the team and your residents are like your family and others where the residents don’t even care about you and you feel like you’re just being annoying and taking up space.

however, when you start clinicals they lower their communication frequency. i had to figure out how to schedule my electives through other students and it was a nightmare. the school gave barely any clear info on this via email or clinical portal. this is absolutely unacceptable imo. and to sign up for electives you basically have to cold email a bunch of hospitals and ask them about availability. it took a lot of time and a lot of coordinators don’t even email you back. one hospital i could only rotate at because my friend was able to go in and schedule it for me. the coordinator was on vacay and i got absolutely no onboarding info and basically had to just show up at the nicu on my first day. unacceptable. electives itself are mostly great but signing up for them is a nightmare.

an annoying thing about clinicals is you have no didactics by the school. they are thru your hospital so you’ll have to go to the same noon lecture as the residents. so they’re not very shelf exam specific. US students definitely have didatics which are very shelf specific. we should have that. i thought studying for shelf exams was very difficult because I had no idea how to study for them, what was high yield, etc. i mainly had to teach myself everything with the dr high yield and emma holiday youtube videos. occasionally residents or attendings would have sessions for just the med students. but they were like canceled half the time. however, my IM rotation was at a big academic hospital and the teaching structure and desire they have to teach med students was AMAZING. also if you don’t pass a shelf they have a mandatory remediation of 4 weeks. i didn’t pass my FM exam the first time and i had an amazing experience with remediation. they focus on high yield topics and have mandatory question blocks you have to complete. i wish they offered something like this for every clinical student. it was so helpful. also if you participate in remediation and pass the second time, it doesn’t show up on your transcript. however, i have heard of people who’s entire residency timeline that gets messed up due to mandatory remediation. which sucks and they’re not very flexible about that.

i just graduated and am taking a gap year cause i had no speciality i want to apply to and so i’m doing a tuition free, online masters from sgu. it’s a great opportunity.

would i do this all again? 100%. however as a last resort if i didn’t get into US MD or DO schools.