Ninety Eight Percent

From day one when I first met my class, I’ve always been amazed at the caliber of students that come into and out of AUC, despite being a Caribbean medical school. I see the drive and the passion in my classmates, upperclassmen, and alumni. Many of us are motivated by our past mistakes, our desire to not give up on our dreams, and our wish to make a difference in people’s lives. We just got some great news from our Dean that  between January 1 through August 15 of this year, 210 AUC students took the USMLE Step 1 for the first time. 205 of those students passed on the first try, making AUC’s first-time USMLE Step 1 pass rate for this year 98% so far! The average score was 223. This is amazing, not just for a Caribbean medical school, but for any medical school in general to achieve. Congratulations to all my fellow AUC colleagues for the hard work that they have put into their education to make this happen! Proud of you all!

Although AUC is one of the oldest off-shore medical schools in the Caribbean, it has only become a good school relatively recently. For the past decade, AUC has made a lot of educational reforms to become the school it is today. Just in 2003, the first time pass rate was 57%! But after adopting more stringent admissions policies, better faculty hiring processes, and making curriculum changes, AUC’s education has become top-notch among Caribbean medical schools, with a 94% first-time pass rate when I entered in 2009, and 98% that it is now (2012). Here’s a chart showing the progress of AUC’s first-time pass rate since 2003 (I took this picture in early 2011 from a bulletin board at school):

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