Jarvis, a vascular neurologist at the Miami-Dade Neuroscience Institute (MDNI), boils her success down to three things. “Be nice. Be a team player. And persevere like it’s nobody’s business. That’s 9/10ths of the game right there,” says Jarvis, now the medical director of the Primary Stroke Center at North Shore Medical Center in Miami. She’s also a member of the Advanced Neuroscience Network (ANN), an integrated delivery system of medical professionals and hospitals focused on offering a full continuum of neurological care throughout South Florida. Both North Shore and MDNI are members of the network.

Her medical career spans more than a decade—she’s evaluated NFL athletes from the Jacksonville Jaguars for concussion and possible neurological trauma, spoken on behalf of an international pharmaceutical company on stroke and atrial fibrillation, and served as director of stroke for two separate healthcare facilities.

And she isn’t accustomed to backing down from a challenge. So it makes sense that years ago, when someone told her she had no shot of getting into medical school, she didn’t take no for an answer.

 

They Said Her Admission Chances Were Zero.

 

When Jarvis decided to make a career change to medicine—she originally came from the commodities sector, brokering coffees and cocoa in locales ranging from London to Cameroon—it didn’t shake her up much when someone gave her a less-than-favorable prognosis on her chances of getting into medical school.

“He told me my chances were zero,” she says, recalling the conversation between her and the proverbial someone—in this case, a family friend who had served on the board of directors for a United States medical school. It didn’t matter that her grades were great, Jarvis was told: she didn’t have any work experience in medicine, save for when she was a teenager working for her father.

“An admissions committee would look at your file, close it, and move on,” this person told her. “You’d spend the next few years applying, and in the meantime, you’d need to get a job in a lab or some kind of trade showing you’re doing more of the sciences.”
Amy Jarvis, MD

In 2020, 91% of RUSM students passed the initial step of the United States Medical Licensing Examination® (USMLE®) on the first attempt. And in 2022-2023, results show yet another strong year for RUSM with a 98% first-time residency attainment rate* thus far. Located on the island of Barbados and with a network of more than 15,000 alumni, RUSM is one of the largest providers of doctors for the U.S. healthcare system. RUSM graduates practice in all 50 states and in Puerto Rico.

*First time residency attainment rate is the percent of students attaining a 2023-24 residency position out of all graduates or expected graduates in 2022-23 who were active applicants in the 2023 NRMP match or who attained a residency position outside the NRMP match.