Written By Travis Hornsby, CFA®, CFP®
Perhaps no one else in the United States has counseled more St. George's University (SGU) graduates than I have on student loans. At Student Loan Planner®, we've talked to folks in eye-popping amounts of debt. There's no way that the projected cost of education on the school's website accurately warns St. George medical school and vet school students in my view.
Let me be clear. St George's in the Caribbean island of Grenada produces a lot of great doctors and veterinarians. This isn't me questioning the education so much as the cost.
If you go to St. George's University medical school or veterinary school, you could come out owing more than $400,000. Even with that high of a debt load, there are strategies that I use to help St George's grads make the most of their lives financially.
That said, this post is entirely my own opinion, but I'll back it up with some facts. If you're currently struggling with student loans from St George's University, or just want to make sure you're using the best strategy, you can check out how I help professionals with high debt loads from medical and veterinary school here.
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St. George's University tuition and fees list is conveniently hard to understand
This is true at least for me, and I deal with student loans all day. I'm guessing the average student just looks at it and shrugs their shoulders while signing on the dotted line. Take a look at its medical school and veterinarian school costs as shown on their website.
St. George's 2023-2024 Med School Cost
St George's 2023-2024 Vet School Cost
SGU seems to obscure its true cost of attendance
Any idea how to read this? I'm sure after discussing the numbers with a financial aid officer it might make some more sense. BUT SERIOUSLY! Where's the big giant number of what you'll owe at the end of the program?
Most high cost private and public institutions publish a total summed up cost of attendance. While it's no longer published on its website, check out this quote for its University School of Medicine costs that was listed in previous years:
The cost of medical school can be tallied on a calculator, but the return on this investment in medical school is not quantifiable.
St George's University
YES IT IS! It is VERY quantifiable.
From conversations I've had with current students, I've learned that St George's medical school kicks a lot of people out for low grades. Is the return on investment still not quantifiable when you have $100,000 of debt and no degree?
I don't think St George's University should justify why they're charging so much to get a high return for their investors (it is a for-profit school after all). They should simply just list the numbers.
Notice how St George's University says tuition numbers subject to change
I've spoken with a lot of St George's alums, and they tell me that their tuition and fees went up every year they were there. So why then, does the cost of attendance suggest a static price for each year in the picture above?
Why shouldn't the expected tuition and fees at least show a projected yearly increase? Everyone in the world knows that what's going to happen.
St George's medical school and vet school in Grenada has a high cost of living
Nowhere on St George's website does it show an anticipated student budget. Grenada is a pretty expensive place. Flights home will run you a lot of money. As an example, the cheapest round trip tickets I could find from Grenada to St. Louis (where I live) were $1,000.
Rent might be manageable, but food can be pretty pricey according to SGU students I spoke with. If you're frugal, sure the total cost might be less than the Northeast or California. Of course, Grenada is also way more expensive than a CVM in the Midwest or Southeast.
If you're going to SGU for med school or vet school, you're probably not rich and will need to borrow. By excluding living expenses from their tuition and fees page, they make their programs look a lot more reasonable.
Loan origination fees and accrued interest not included anywhere
I've researched dozens of medical and vet schools when it comes to tuition. Most list the anticipated $3,000 to $5,000 yearly origination fees for the loans somewhere in the anticipated cost of attendance.
I couldn't find any evidence of this when searching St George's University website. Again, this makes the total cost appear to be lower than it actually is.
Also, accrued interest while in school will run tens of thousands of dollars. By not including these expenses, no effort is made to educate students on the real price of attendance.
St George's University is for-profit, which means there's a big incentive to raise prices
If loan forgiveness programs exist, why not charge the highest prices the market will accept? After all, you could tell students that “the government will pick up the tab” and “student debt is good debt.”
Many of my competitors charge close to $1,000 for student loan consulting. Maybe I could charge three times what I do today because the market would pay it, but to me, that feels like taking advantage of people.
As long as SGU alums don't have to write a check for $5,000 each month for 10 years after graduation, the angry blowback from high tuition never happens. Hence, the answer to every question is raise the price and get more money.
The school does perform a legitimate service in educating doctors and veterinarians. SGU has helped thousands of students achieve their professional dreams. I shouldn't discount that because it wouldn't be fair.
Even so, there's no natural roadblock to raising tuition relentlessly. When you consider that St George's University is owned by for-profit investors, their primary interest is to educate students, keep its licensing first-time pass rate high, and charge as much money as possible to do so while keeping the federal loan stream flowing.
What is the real cost for some recent St George's medical school graduates?
Here's an example of how the cost listed by the school and the real debt-financed education differ.
Let's look at the St George's med school program cost. If I add Terms 1-5 for the Grenada campus part of the program, and terms 1-5 of the clinical rotations part of the program, total tuition cost (including administrative fees) at St George's med school is $318,640 for the 2021-2022 academic year.
But that figure doesn't include living expenses. Conservatively, let's assume those are $20,000 a year for four years of med school. That would bring the total to $398,640.
On top of this, let's include four years of origination fees. If you didn't know, those would probably average about 3% of this total. Let's start rounding and say that brings the cost to about $411,000.
Additionally, we have four years' of accrued interest, say at an average 6% interest rate. That would run about $61,000 over four years. We're now up to about $472,000 that a grad in the class of 2025 could graduate owing in student loans.
What have I seen among recent St George's medical school grads? Usually between $300,000 and $400,000. However, we didn't include all the various books, graduation fees, and more realistic living expenses in my model above. Importantly, remember that figure is also backward looking.
According to my sources, a large number of med school students are forced to drop out before getting their degree. SGU does not want to have a high percent of its students not matching into residencies. The school is more than happy to access tuition dollars from students. Even though it knows a lot of them will not end up becoming doctors.
Imagine coming home from a year or two at St George's medical school with no degree and a pile of debt. Many people do. Therefore, they should disclose that risk in the cost description and not use emotionally manipulative language like “the investment in an MD is not quantifiable.”
It's certainly quantifiable to the investors who are eager to make millions off of students' dreams.
As a prospective med student, be cautious about attending SGU and know that you do so at your own risk.
If you do graduate and match, then your med school debt would be comparable to many private schools. There are certainly higher cost institutions out there, but of course there are many that are far cheaper.
What is the real cost for some recent St George's vet school graduates?
According to the vet school curriculum page, there are nine terms total for the St George's vet school four-year program.
If I sum up the cost of the vet school program tuition and administrative fees for the 2021-2022 academic year, I get $197,595.
Then, throw on living expenses of $20,000 a year, and that's $277,595.
If you add on an extra 25% for loan fees and origination fees, the total projected debt for an SGU grad in 2025 would be about $347,000.
Here's the problem though, with the more recent grads I've spoken with who financed their own education entirely, their debt has been significantly higher than this number.
In fairness, I'm not speaking to the lowest debt St George's grads. If someone only has $100,000 in debt because they received family help, they're probably using my free cash-back refinancing links.
Also, I hear that the vet school has a more supportive culture than the med school at SGU. With each grad guaranteed a clinical spot, there might be lower stress in this regard. That's a major difference between the SGU vet school and SGU medical school.
One SGU veterinarian pointed out to me that you could find a place for $500 a month if you tried in Grenada. So if having a low debt load is important to you, I think it's possible to come out with a low $200,000 balance as a vet. You just have to really watch every penny.
Still, the SGU site talks about how their tuition “compares favorably with other top vet schools.”
If you include all the additional costs of going there, I don't see how that's a true statement unless you're talking about the most expensive in-state programs. Perhaps they should said, “We compare favorably to many high-cost private, out-of-state, and high-cost in-state vet school tuitions.”
Why have my clients' total costs deviated from the school's published numbers?
I think that folks are spending more than $20,000 a year on living expenses like I mentioned. The extra St George's school fees and books probably amount to another $10,000.
Also, we didn't talk about current students and how they'll almost certainly owe more than what I'm modeling here because of tuition increases the school will probably make. Add on another 5% per year to the total costs I'm modeling above to get an estimate for your class if you're planning on going in the future.
One clear takeaway I have is that St George's University does not do a great job of publishing the total loan burden you might have after you graduate. For a for-profit school at a minimum, there should be a prerequisite before obtaining access to the blank check of federal student loans.
My thoughts? I believe the school should do a better job telling applicants what their current students are leaving with in terms of student loan debt. Otherwise, I don't believe St George's University deserves access to federal student loans. This is particularly true when the for-profit nature of the school creates a natural incentive to raise the price of fulfilling your professional calling.
St Matthew's University and Ross University fall into this category as well
From what I've seen, Caribbean medical schools and Caribbean vet schools like those at St Matthew's and Ross University might charge even more.
The takeaway from a policy perspective is maybe it would be a better idea to take some of this federal money and force lower cost US-based schools to accept more students.
At least then the money would stay here in the US, and more physicians and veterinarians could achieve their professional dreams at a fair price.
How to get help post-graduation with St George's medical school or vet school loans
This is the self-interested section where I tell you how great I am and how you should totally hire me to help fix your loan problem.
Here's the truth, I'm not a magician, but I can create a long-term plan that will give you the confidence that you're on the best possible path financially. Most of my St George's University clients were making $10,000+ mistakes with their loan repayment strategy.
I just charge a flat fee to help. Watch out for financial advisors who try to give you whole life insurance as the answer to everything or who won't admit that student loans aren't a part of their circle of competence.
Hopefully, this information services as a launching point for some discussion as to the merits of for-profit Caribbean medical schools and Caribbean vet schools receiving federal student loans and why the cost of attendance is so astonishingly high.
Just know that sticking your head in the ground and pretending the loans aren't there won't help. Getting a plan will.
“Nowhere in St George’s website that I could find does it show an anticipated student budget.”
A simple google search for “SGU student budgets” will give you the SGU page with estimated cost of attendance which includes school fees and living expense estimates:
https://mycampus.sgu.edu/web/financial-aid/student-budgets
Not to defend SGU’s fees in any way – I think medical school is WAY too expensive on the whole – but it is comparable to the cost of many US medical schools.
SGU Alum, 2016.
I’d be curious to hear some of the med schools out there with comparable costs of attendance. Also, their budget only covers August to June, not even a full year. You’d have to annualize expenses like rent and travel to include them in the student’s budget. I’m glad they post this important information somewhere though.
NYU Medical and NYU Dental are comparable and cost about the same, if not more, than SGU Medical
That’s true, and I’ll probably write a post on them as well. I’ve heard an amazing amount of straight up falsehoods coming from their administration according to many students and applicants I’ve worked with.
I chose St. George’s for this article because they deliberately accept more students than they can place to boost their revenue. NYU from what I’ve heard doesn’t fail hundreds of med students. St. George’s receives US federal student loans despite not being located in the US, and they do this at scale much higher than other perhaps even worse institutions in terms of debt like Ross University.
I’ve been contacted by several individuals who tell me that they were kicked out without a second chance from St. George’s with six figures in debt and no degree. As St. George’s is a for profit institution, that really seems terrible to me.
So what do you suggest to those students? Do they have to pay back or can they claim they were misled by the school and have the loan discharged?
Currently they need to try to work for a 501c3 hospital and get PSLF if they’re med students. If they’re vet students they need to optimize PAYE. There’s a low chance that St. George’s loans get forgiven due to the fraud shutdown like what happened at ITT Tech and Corinthian. Furthermore, Devos is taking a hard line on not forgiving loans from for profit schools that got cutoff. I would not bet on any federal bailouts at this point.
If you’ve already enrolled and are past your first year finish for sure. If you’re a prospective student my opinion is don’t go unless you’re convinced that your happiness would be severely impeded if you didn’t go down that career path.
Actually I did go for 2 years few years ago and unfortunately was amongst those who didn’t make the cut to continue. I was dismissed in their 4th term with no degree or even option to transfer any of my credits to their masters program. Still paying off the loan, almost $90k still left to pay. Searched for ways to get rid of the loan but couldn’t find anything so paying off as much as I can. Agreed, the path of off shore schools is self destructive
Wow that’s unreal for a for profit school living from the federal government and access to it’s loan program to do that
Are you aware of any Private Lenders that currently allow/offer students loans for U.S. Citizen at SGU vet schooling at this time?
Right now I’m not aware of any no
It isn’t a secret that these Caribbean medical schools are for profit mill for students who were not accepted into a US Medical school. Because the school knows these students are desperate for admission they charge astronomical prices and kick students out for poor grades. What is not being mentioned here is how incredibly difficult it is to get a decent residency coming from a Caribbean medical school. These student must have exceptional STEP scores ( much higher that both US allopathic and osteopathic students) and then still match at lower tier residencies, which is terrible considering the training is the same . I am a current medical student at a US allopathic school, but have many friends at Carribean medical schools. The cost, competition, and residency prospects after graduating from one of these places is dismal and they prey on students desire to enter medical school with low GPAs/ MCATS.
Great points. I’ve seen St Georges grads be very successful with high incomes, particularly if they’re willing to work in an underserved area. However, I’ve seen many more who are really struggling. The best course of action in my view is if you have a low MCAT it’d be better to take a gap year and make your application more competitive so you can reapply.
I had a perfect 4.0 average and scored above the 90th percentile on my MCAT, and I still had to go here. Good letters of recommendation too, although no one with connections. There were a few other students in my class who performed well but still ended up going here. What we all had in common was that we came from high competition areas. In places like that, it can come down to little factors. I had a director during my Psych rotation inform me that they (and he was involved in this) declined people residency positions for reasons such as that their picture didn’t have them in a suit, etc. No one told me things like that before, so that is something I would warn people about. There are all sort of secret rules, like it annoys them if you know things or subjects they don’t, or you have a history of unconventional solutions. No one tells you things like that before. So, no, it isn’t just because people have bad scores that they end up having to go into this horribly authoritarian, awful place.
Their Clinical Education department doesn’t even have a phone number. The common theory is that this is so they don’t hear from all the students they keep screwing over.
I have to agree that being a Carib med student definitely puts you at a disadvantage in several ways, but if you understand that attending SGU is a second chance in itself, then that’s a gamble many students are willing to take. Day 1 you’re told the amount you will owe as soon as you graduate (cost of attendance is also available online). Just anecdotally, several of my friends attend dental or med schools in the US and will easily graduate with over $400, 000 in debt (especially when you consider out-of-state expenses). Look, it’s all a racket and the exorbitant cost of going to med school anywhere in the US/Carib is outrageous to begin with.
I personally know several SGU alum attendings who have been pretty successful in urban cities (medical directors, fellowships in competitive specialties, etc). They graduated more than a decade ago and they heard all the same stuff (not to say there isn’t truth to the challenges that come with being a Carib grad; just that this is old news).
As far as second chances go, I would have to disagree and say SGU does offer second- and even third chances- to many students. You can retake a course or an entire term- sometimes twice. Also, you have the option to join a special program where you take the same classes, but they are led in a small group fashion where a tutor goes over the objectives and quizzes you after each lecture. There is also an entire department dedicated to tutoring services both in a small group and a one-on-one setting. There are many things to gripe about SGU (as with any med school or university btw), but unless there were special circumstances behind why certain students were not given a second chance, they do offer second chances.
That’s great color and appreciate you sharing your experience. I guess I’d prefer to see the school share some risk with the students, especially since it’s a for profit generating big dollars at the expense of the US taxpayer, which is funding the loans. After all, the institution is not even located in the US yet students receive unlimited funds. Also alums who graduated 10 years ago have wildly lower costs than those graduating today. One would have to look at the forward looking debt load for the class of 2022 to make a level headed decision.