Attending medical school outside the United States that does not have guaranteed U.S. federal students loans can often be a challenge. Even for schools that may qualify for private loans, they sometimes do not cover travel expenses or the high cost of living, books, uslme fees, and other miscellaneous expenses. While some students resort to taking online classes to qualify to student loans in the U.S., which can be time consuming and disasterous for one's GPA, I have noticed some students have become creative in financing their medical school education abroad. I came across a website today that listed a number of medical students from Carribean Medical Schools that were ineligible for student loans called gofundme.com. What amazed me was not that medical students were using gofundme.com, but rather it seemed like people were actually impressed at the determination of many of these student and actually donated money. While I didn't see any $25,000 USD donations that would pay for an entire year's medical tuition and room and board expenses, I did see donations in the hundreds of dollars that would surely go a ways into helping out.
Another website that I noticed was begslist.org. The problem with begslist.org is that you really have no way of knowing that someone actually received any of the donations, and in what amount, or if the person has met their goal. The gofundme website has a format that is similar to many microfinance loan sites (without the loan) that may work well if a medical student is truly in need.
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