Yes, MCAT is a joke for Singaporeans in terms of the difficulty of the questions. But when Singaporeans to do MCAT under time constraint, that is another story. Singaporeans are trained to do extremely difficult questions in ample amount of time but not easy questions under very limited time.
AP/IBs/SATs are all standardized timed test with a heavy MCQ component. No doubt they are all 'jokes,' not just for the Singaporeans, for everyone. How are they that different from the MCAT, really? If everything is easy in terms of difficulties, again, why people can do well on one joke, but not the other?
Please provide evidence or stats showing that the quality of the students in Duke-NUS has been declining over the years
Sharing some of the statistics as you have requested, a few years ago the average MCAT score for Duke-NUS accepted students on the old system was around
33, something close to a 93rd percentile. Last year it was
511, 85th percentile.
Please do not compare Duke-NUS and American medical schools in the American context....American DO schools
The comparison is apt. Singaporean MOH is encouraging med school graduates to not specialize and become generalists instead. Training future-generalist to practice in the primary care setting is exactly what DO schools in the American system do.
If you really want to compare that way, I can tell you that Duke-NUS graduates are consider FMG in USA and residency match rate for Duke-NUS graduates will be even lower than those from American DO schools if they want to practice medicine in USA.
This statement is false, of all the high-quality graduates from Duke-NUS in the past, and of the few of them who were allowed to do residency in USA, a lot of of them matched into good programs like Internal Medicine at Duke Health, Anesthesiology at MGH(Harvard) ...etc. Duke-NUS graduates in the
past definitely out-performed the DO schools. Please do not undermine your
brilliant predecessors.
If you want to practice in USA, going to a DO school is indeed a better choice.
I never in my original postings asked for anyone's consultation. This has nothing to do with what I want to do. I was merely sharing my opinion and the facts I know to the best of my knowledge. We can disagree on certain points, but please do not make this personal. Though I realize kindness does not always beget kindness.
You can always pay the full fees (without government and MOH subsidies) for Duke-NUS education, after that you will be free from the service bond. No one is forcing you to come to Duke-NUS, everything is made clear to you before you sign the service bond contract. Your European servants example is a very poor example.
How is it an inappropriate comparison? You think these European indentured servants did not sign a contract? You think they were not allowed to go off on their own supposed they struck a gold mine and could pay off what they owed for passage across the Atlantic? No one was forcing them to do anything and everything was made clear before boarding the ship.
I mean of course you can argue that these indentured servants could never pay off the bond, because the landlord had unjustly inflated the actual cost of the passage. But I think it's a fair statement that med school education, although costly, does not go all the way to 500K Sing dollar + 40K to 63K per year multiplied by 4.