Should You Go To A Caribbean Med School? w/ Hana Malik

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Hey, welcome. This is Episode eight in this episode, I have the pleasure of interviewing Hanna to speak about her medical school perspective. You can find her on Instagram @withintheroute where she posts great pictures. What's super relatable captions, if you would like to learn more about her journey and why she chose to do medicine in the Caribbean, then keep on listening. Hi, Hanna. Thanks for joining us today.

Hi.

How are you doing?

I'm well. How are you?

I'm good. So my first question for you is just a little bit of an introduction. Where are you from? Where do you go to medical school and what year are you in?

Sure. So I grew up in Connecticut and I attend Ross University School of Medicine. They used to be on the island of Dominica, but recently they've relocated to Barbados. And I am finishing my second year.

Oh, that's awesome. So how have you liked it so far? My second question is kind of like how did you come to the decision to choose to go there for school versus staying in the US?

So I graduated undergrad in 2018 and by that time I had only taken the mcat once I scored OK. It was like not the greatest score and my GPA was also borderline competitive. I had about a 3.3 and typically you need like a 3.4 or above to be considered competitive for the states. So regardless, I try to playing with my scores to a couple of programs in the States. I applied to Drexel, I applied to a couple of places and some of them had programs where you could do like a Masters and depending on your GPA after your masters, you could get into their medical school. Unfortunately, I was not accepted to any of those programs, so I ended up taking like a six month break to kind of just breathe after undergrad and figure myself out. And during that time, I ended up taking the MCAT again, but I only increased my score by a couple of points and it definitely wasn't enough to put me in a position where I felt comfortable applying to other schools again. So I spoke to a couple of my close family friends, and one of them had recently gotten married and her husband was from Ross like attended Ross and he was doing his rotations and beginning his residency. So I got like a lot of first hand information from him regarding the school and what the atmosphere was like and just whether it works like the process works. And I felt a lot more confident after speaking to him about applying because the most important thing to me was being able to get started as soon as possible. I was 22 when I started Ross, and I wouldn't have changed that for anything. I think that was one of the best decisions I made. Just because medicine is a really long process and you want to take advantage of starting as quickly as you can if you're one hundred percent sure that that's the thing that you want to do.

Yeah, no, I agree with that. And also, I know this isn’t in one of the five questions I wanted to ask you, but I was just wondering and you can answer if you want to or not, but did you apply to both M.D. and US DO schools?

So I had only applied to oh yes, I applied to 2 M.D. and the Drexel program that I was talking about, that was a DO.

I had no idea Drexel was DO.

Yeah, they have both.

Oh, that's awesome. OK, so then how do you say how did you make that decision since it's a big decision to just like, move so far away from home to like it's a long plane ride, can be expensive to make trips back and forth. So how did you kind of like sit down? And what was the major deciding factor that made you feel like really confident that you were going to be OK going so far away?

I will say that once I was accepted into Ross's program, they were really, really good about staying in communication and being accessible via email or phone and answering any questions that I had telling me exactly what I should bring to the island, what like other students have brought in the past and what worked for them. And that helped ease my fears a lot. They immediately put me in a network with other students that have either been on the island or have graduated and can share their experiences. And I know I, I kind of sound like a plug for the school, but I was actually really surprised because I had heard, like, a lot of negative things about the Caribbean, just like anybody else up until that point. So I was pretty surprised to experience this kind of like welcoming hospitality.

Oh, yeah. So that actually goes perfectly into my next question about like, what are some Caribbean med school myths that you could easily debunk that I feel like a lot of people have, because I think there's so much uncertainty and we hear about people going, but then we don't really follow up and see what happened after they finally moved and went to Ross, like how has their experience been? So what are some myths that you could debunk about going there for school?

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the biggest things I've heard, and this is even discussed like among students at the Ross, is that it's a for profit school and that means that they basically accept anybody and they're just trying to make money off students coming and trying to learn medicine who may not be the most qualified. And as a result, they end up failing. But Ross still makes money. So regarding that, I like there is some factor that Ross is a for profit school. But what most people don't know is that regardless of how many students start out in the in the initial class, like my first semester class was almost four hundred kids. And that's a really big difference compared to the states where most starting classes are like anywhere from seventy five to I think like one hundred twenty. And you could correct me on that.

But I know our classes one seventy. I think schools, some of them accept a little bit more than just one hundred, but that's that's about correct.

Yeah. Like usually will be less than two hundred. Right. Like nowhere near four hundred.

No, no. Not at all.

Right so they accept a lot of students but like at least the admission credentials are somewhat in line with the other schools with the like in regard to taking the you have to have taken the car. You need to usually have a cumulative GPA of at least like a 3.2. So it's not that they just accept anybody. You know, it's they are really looking for students who have the potential, but maybe because of their age or whatever situation they went through after undergrad, they weren't accepted to a US school or maybe there was like really strong. But their MCAT score wasn't as strong. And, you know, all these deciding factors that don't benefit you in the States, they look for students with this like restless potential and then accept them here and try to nurture them and give them the resources that they need to be able to practice medicine regardless. Like some of the smartest people I've met have definitely been at Ross. And the punchline is like we are like, oh, my God, why are you at a Caribbean school? But realizing that being at a Caribbean school does not diminish, you know, like your intellect or your potential or your capabilities as a future doctor, it's really not synonymous for that. And I wish that more people would appreciate just how universal medicine really is. Like at the end of the day, same curriculum. We're taught the same facts, the same language regarding the human body. And we only do two years on the island, you know, like our last two years are doing rotations in various hospitals throughout the United States. And we got that same exposure and same experience at the end of the day that a US student would.

Yeah, and I think the people that do end up leaving Ross, like when we start talking about either the dropout rate or the failure rate, I think those people like they may have had the credentials to get into Ross, but then maybe they realize that they don't love medicine as much as they thought they did and they don't do. Amazing because you're doing medicine day in and day out. So if you don't enjoy studying biology, anatomy, etcetera, then like, I can see why you wouldn't. You do exceptionally well.

Oh, yeah, absolutely, I believe so.

That would make sense to me.

There were a lot of students and my first semester class who came and ended up realizing that medicine wasn't for them. And there were also a lot of students there that had families back home, had kids, had, you know, other lifestyle factors that complicated being able to just be away from home and studying like 12, 18 hours a day. And I think that people discount how much of an effect that actually has on you. Look, it was really hard for me. And I'm just you know, I'm 22 when I started and I didn't have half as many responsibilities. It was hard for me too to be away from family.

Yeah, for sure. It's a big adjustment. And I want to also reemphasize how you said there's a lot of a lot of very smart, capable people at these Caribbean schools. It's just really hard to get into a US school, like, really hard.

A lot of respect to those who have done that.

I know like, I had a I think I had a decent competitive GPA. My MCAT test score held me back a little bit and I applied to the Caribbean and I considered going I applied to St. George.

OK, yeah. That was another school that I applied to. Yeah.

Because I have a cousin that went there. So basically, like you had a family friend that gave you some ends on Ross and I had a family member that gave me some things on St. George and I considered going because like they just make it really hard in the US. But yeah. Thank you for sharing that. So I think you already answered my next question, which was the one very specific driving oh, sorry, you did not answer this one. So my next question for you is, what was the one very specific driving force that motivated you to become a doctor?

So I really like science. It sounds kind of tacky, but I enjoyed learning as much as I could about so many things related to science when I was growing up, like whether it be like about outer space or like how the human body functions or just like why things work the way they do or why they exist in nature the way they do. And as I got older and I realized that, you know, I really like interacting with people. I like talking to people about what's going on for them in their personal and social experiences and things like that. I realized that being a doctor would be the best way to combine the two. And I pretty much decided while I was in high school and I had some volunteering experience at a hospital, that being a doctor is something I could see myself doing and really enjoying and becoming passionate about.

Yeah, that's a great reason I kind of have a similar reason, I also agree that it's so nice to combine the two passions of being around people, helping people, and then also having this drive and passion for learning biology a lot more than any of your other classes that kind of make those two fit together really well.

Yeah, you know, I learn about so many clinical correlations. I mean, obviously, we're in med school, but each time I am so fascinated, like, wow, that's how that happens. I remember my first semester we learned about gal and how the uric acid builds up and something as simple as that I was just so impressed with. And I felt like, you know, like that's really fascinating and I want to learn more and it really works out in my favor, literally.

So I really liked anatomy. When I look back on it, I know what I was going through it. I was just like, this is terrible. And having to dissect cadavers was I didn't love it, you know? So I but I do have such an appreciation for it. Like looking back on my first year, we were very anatomy heavy and I'll do the same thing. I'll be like, oh, so that's how it works. Like whenever I'm bloated issues, which is like 90 percent of the time because I have IBS, I'm like, OK, so my transverse Cohen is like acting up because that's the area I can tell is inflamed on my body and it's just like nice to know where things are.

Absolutely. I'm so sorry about your IBS.

Oh it's terrible. It's stress induced. I didn't used to have it. Med school would do that to my school will do a lot to you guys, I have like eczema, hair loss, IBS I could go on and on. All right. So my last question for you is, what is one very specific piece of advice you would want to leave our listeners with today? It could be related to medicine, are unrelated, but some piece of advice that has made a significant positive contribution to your life.

I would say be careful who you take advice from, because not everybody has your best interests in mind and not everybody wants to see you succeed. And you have to be protective with your space, with your success, with anything that you're trying to accomplish in the sense that go to people who, you know, really know you really get you or go to a stranger. If they seem approachable and they seem friendly enough and talk to them. If there's somebody that is experiencing what you're going through or has like some sort of knowledge in the field that you're trying to enter, because sometimes strangers will just give it to you a lot more honest and raw than somebody that you know really well. But definitely be careful who you take advice from, because there's a lot of people that think they know about everything, and that's not true. You have to go straight to a source or you have to go to somebody that's like a valid person with information to get what you need out of it.

That was amazing advice, honestly, that was so real because it's so true and you might not want to admit that to yourself and you might want to say, no, I have the best friends ever that, like, love me and have my best interest in me or even family members. But it's not always true. I knew someone who was applying to med school at the same time as their friend, and she's Egyptian. And I think her friend was just like white and she was filling out her demographics and she's like, oh, should I put down that I'm Egyptian, you know, because, like, that's more of a minority. Right? And applying to the U.S. and our friend was like, oh, my God. Now make sure just put down that you're you're not Egyptian. You're she's literally Egyptian. And she didn't put it down while she put down this. It falls under the white race. And that obviously doesn't make her a minority when she's applying. It makes her the majority of the people who are applying. You know, that doesn't help your chances. It would help if she had put down she was Egyptian. And talking about it in retrospect was kind of like, I don't think he I think he I thought he had my best interests in mind. But I think it was also kind of like a little bit of a competitive thing, like, oh, if she puts down Egyptian, she might have better chances than I would. And so he advised against it.

Exactly. And, you know, the other thing is that there are so many scholarships minorities are eligible for just because of the severe disadvantage they've had for so long in terms of getting into school or having the financial means to support themselves through school. And that is like a big take away, because after you do that once on your application, if you decide to change it or you say it was a mistake, it kind of brings up into question like, hey, what's going on here? That's kind of sketchy, you know what I mean?

Yeah. One hundred percent. Well, thank you so much for that real advice and for answering some questions about Caribbean versus US. I think it will help a lot of people that listen to this podcast episode and are also conflicted about making that decision. I think your advice is really going to help them point them in one direction or the other.

So thank you so much for having me. And I'm so appreciative because I wish that I had access to more things like this when I was applying to the Caribbean. And I will say to anybody that's considering the Caribbean, if you are willing to work harder than you've ever worked in your life and you can dedicate the time and everything else that goes along with it and you make it through basic sciences, step one, rotations everything, then you will be a successful doctor. And you there's no reason that you shouldn't be able to get residency after making through all of that.

Yes, completely. Thank you for that. And guys, if you've learnt one little thing from this show, I would really appreciate it if you could leave a rating and review. It means a lot to me. And I read them all. If you've enjoyed, make sure you also hit subscribe so you don't miss any new episodes released every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I'll see you in the next one.