St. George's University vs Ross vs AUC: Comparing Cost and Outcomes for Canadian Premeds

Where each school is based and who accredits it

St. George's University (SGU) runs its School of Medicine from Grenada and is accredited by the Grenada Medical and Dental Council, with recognition from the World Federation for Medical Education and the US National Committee on Foreign Medical Education and Accreditation. Ross University School of Medicine (RUSM) moved its campus to Barbados after Hurricane Maria damaged its former Dominica site, and holds accreditation from the Barbados Medical Council and the Caribbean Accreditation Authority for Education in Medicine and other Health Professions (CAAM-HP), with NCFMEA recognition as well, according to public records on the school . The American University of the Caribbean (AUC) is based in Cupecoy, Sint Maarten, and has held accreditation from the Accreditation Commission on Colleges of Medicine since 1995, with a listing in the World Directory of Medical Schools that lets graduates pursue ECFMG certification.

All three sit outside the Canadian system. None of them appears on the Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools (CACMS) roster, which covers Canadian MD programs only, according to CACMS itself.

That single fact shapes everything else in this comparison.

Program length and structure

SGU offers entry three times a year (January, April, August) and lets students choose among 4, 5, 6, and 7 year MD tracks depending on their prior coursework and preferred pace, according to SGU . Ross and AUC follow the more standard Caribbean structure: several semesters of basic sciences on the island campus, followed by clinical rotations at teaching hospitals mostly in the United States. All three require you to pass the USMLE Step 1 before you can begin clinical rotations, and none of them offers a shortcut around that gate.

The multiple entry dates SGU offers can matter for a Canadian applicant who wants to start sooner after finishing prerequisites rather than waiting for a single fall intake. Ross and AUC both moved their clinical rotation network toward hospital partners in the continental United States over the past decade, so ask each school for its current list of core rotation sites before you enrol, since that list changes as hospital partnerships shift.

Completion rates: the one outcome number that is confirmed

Marketing pages tend to advertise graduation rates. A more grounded figure is on time completion, reported through federal disclosure data because Ross and AUC both participate in the US student loan system for their American enrollees.

On time completion is not the same as attrition.

A student who finishes a year late because they repeated a rotation still counts as a non completer here even though they graduated. Treat this figure as a floor on how many students finish smoothly, not a ceiling on how many finish eventually.

USMLE performance: one confirmed data point

For the same 2019 reporting period, Ross reported a 96.21% first time pass rate on USMLE Step 1 and 89.23% on Step 2 Clinical Knowledge, against a comparison group of 110 US News ranked schools averaging 96.3% and 96.6%. Comparable current figures for SGU, AUC, or Saba University were not confirmed in the sources checked for this article.

One more thing changed since 2019 that matters more than any single school's pass rate: USMLE Step 1 moved to pass or fail grading in January 2022, so Step 2 CK score is now the number that carries weight in a residency application, not your Step 1 score.

Tuition: what to expect and what you must check yourself

Current per semester tuition at all three schools was not confirmed for this article and changes most academic years, so treat any number you see on a forum or blog as outdated until you confirm it on the school's own admissions page. What is confirmed: historical loan data from the US Department of Education College Scorecard showed Americans finishing Ross with median total student loan debt of 349,973 USD as of 2019, and AUC graduates at 331,634 USD as of 2019.

Those figures are in US dollars, cover American federal borrowers only, and do not reflect a Canadian student's actual cost since Canadians cannot access US federal loans. Use them as a rough sense of program scale, not as your budget.

Your path back to Canada looks the same either way

Because none of the three schools carries Canadian accreditation, a graduate of SGU, Ross, or AUC enters Canadian licensure through the same international medical graduate pathway: MCC certification exams, then the National Assessment Collaboration (NAC) exam, then the CaRMS international medical graduate stream for residency matching, according to the Medical Council of Canada .

Picking one school over another based on a belief that it is more recognized in Canada is not supported by anything confirmed in this research. Provincial licensing colleges and CaRMS treat IMGs from accredited offshore schools under the same framework regardless of which of the three you attend.

How to shortlist between them

• Ask each admissions office for a current, dated tuition and fee schedule in writing, not a marketing brochure figure

• Ask for the academic dismissal rate by entering cohort, not a polished graduation rate

• Confirm which teaching hospitals each school currently uses for core clinical rotations and where those sites are located

• Ask what proportion of a recent cohort passed Step 1 on the first attempt before advancing to rotations

• Talk to a provincial licensing college or the Medical Council of Canada before you commit, so you understand the IMG route you will follow regardless of which school you choose