A word to those attending Filipino Medical schools.
Year 1, 2 and 3, count on at 40-60 lecture hours/week with mandatory attendance.
Each year gets progressively more time consuming and difficult.
If your objective is to be graded on your USMLE readieness and have your 3rd and 4th year clinical rotations all setup for you - go to the whatever Caribbean medical school and stay away from Filipino medical school, the schools could care less about your country's board exams.
Filipino medical school is hard knocks doctor training. The only thing you have will have time for is passing and perhaps squeezing in USMLE prep. Forget about research, getting published, rotations during your 3rd year back in the US.
The larger schools cater to international students a little more so than others, though you do a pay a fee: donation fee, international student fee, whatever you want to call it. Unv of Fatima in particular has a very large contingent of international students, with a big subset of which are Americans - with a 'special' semesteral schedule that starts in September and ends in late June. University of East Ramon and University of Santo Tomas are probably the two other schools with the biggest international students contingent. But beware, if you aren't in the top half, odds are you are going to repeating a school year at least once. This is common for local students in the Philippines as it is for international students.
Whatever you've read about paying for summer classes or removal exams and you'll automatically pass. This is completely false, even at Fatima, a LOT of students get held back every year or dismissed from Philippine Medical schools, including Fatima - if you don't know your stuff - repeat or transfer.
This is how it is for local medical students and foreign medical students.
If you don't preform up to par during the school year, you will have the chance for removals. But don't expect special treatment because you've paid an extra fee or are paying higher tuition. The only thing you're paying for is getting help with your student visa, you're in same competitive system of survival of the fittest as local Filipino medical students. Know your stuff, repeat or quit.
Also, there will be absolutely zero incentive for USMLE prep or getting you ready for the boards by year 2 by the school - the professors could care less. Of course you do work hard and take it on time, it is a badge of merit. But very few do.
By the same token, you'll be using same text books Guyton, Harpers, Katzung, Robbins, etc. as just about every other medical school in the world. Shelf exams can be brutal, but if you know your stuff, you know your stuff - and the Philippine Medical schools do base their curriculums around the gold standard US medical school text books used by USMLE centric medical schools. Though local exam questions you will see are simplistic vignettes and there are no 2-tier style USMLE style questions, so in that regard it's more about memorizing in volume. The expectation is that you will have memorized and understand the concepts of the requisite text or manuals verbatim, but not too much USMLE style problem solving
Every bit of the high yield stuff you'll see in First Aid will be covered to some degree. Let me put it this way if 75% of everything you need to know' to be ready for USMLE questions, slash that to 50% in the Philippines - but you won't have time to make up the remainder unless you start early.
Filipino medical schools stick to their curriculum of becoming ready for the Philippines board exam and a praticing doctor by the time you graduate, as is expected of every Filipino medical school graduate. So don't expect some sort of modified schedule because you are from out of the country.
Year 1, Anatomy, Physio, Biochem, Histology (8 hours/week each) and some other classes depending on the school. Attendance is mandatory. Recording not allowed.
Year 2, you will be studying along with Pathology and Pharmacology and numerous other electives, Obsetrics, Surgery, Pediaterics and Internal Medicine. You'll also be doing work with mock patients starting year 2.
Year 3 isn't a 'sit back and exhale time my basic science years are over' like the typical US Allopathic or Carribean - it goes up a notch; this is the 'welcome to Filipino Medical' year. No rotations with 2 hour lectures a day - expect 40-60 yours/week in lectures and lot of time in your school's teaching hospital. The volume of material get's larger and summer and winter breaks are shrunk to a few weeks.
Year 4 are called internship year - 11-15 months straight, many blocks of 7 days/week, rotating to different Filipino hospitals. Gold standard hospitals that are brilliant, by the book, insured, wealthy paitents and world class physicians and then some low income government hospitals where you are the among the lowest part of the staff in a crowded underserved hospital. In low income, if the attending trusts you enough, you could find yourself, doing sutures all day, hands-on assisting in surgeries, delivering babies. If not, expect to be treated like garbage. No lovely seminars by a visiting professor promoting or picking out electives for rotations.
The amount of first hand clinical experience and knowledge you will have gained is comparable to a residency - but don't expect US medical school residency match directors to care. They could care less.
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Needless to say, if you are attending a Filipino medical school, if you are sure you are passing (basically if you are in the upper 50% of your class), then use every bitty free time for board prep, otherwise you simply won't have time to for a proper board for the steps till after you graduate.
A typical post allopathic 2nd year USMLE Step 1 passer would stand little chance at passing Filipino board exam which is administered after graduation. Similarly, the average Filipino board passer would not fare as well applying basic science concepts on 2-tier, 3-tier style questions of USMLE Step 1.