British school leavers in the US.. what do i dooo?????

[rush919]

Hey guys I wasnt sure where to post this exactly so I thought I would just make a new thread. I am a UK school leaver and I am interested in studying medicine in the US. I understand that it is a graduate degree in the states and that I would need to do a "pre-med" course before I could sit the MCAT. I was wondering if anybody could explain to me what pre-med is and how I would go about in applying for this type of course. My situation is a little different in that I have recently become eligable for a green card and I was wondering if this effects my application at all.

[Scottish Chap]

Hey guys I wasnt sure where to post this exactly so I thought I would just make a new thread. I am a UK school leaver and I am interested in studying medicine in the US. I understand that it is a graduate degree in the states and that I would need to do a "pre-med" course before I could sit the MCAT. I was wondering if anybody could explain to me what pre-med is and how I would go about in applying for this type of course. My situation is a little different in that I have recently become eligable for a green card and I was wondering if this effects my application at all.

Pre-med is just a name for any degree that satisfies the premedical requirements before you submit a medical school application. The premedical requirements are 8 credits in each of: English (some schools), general chemistry, general biology, physics, and organic chemistry. for the sciences, 8 credits is a year-long course and it must have a laboratory requirement. You degree could be anything: chemistry, history, English, philosophy; nobody cares as long as you have those courses I mentioned. You must then take the annoying MCAT (Medical College Admissions Test).

You will need a greed card to be eligible for federal U.S. loans. You will need loans to pay for both undergraduate and medical school. It is not that hard to get into a U.S. undergraduate university (barring Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Penn etc.) without a green card if you can prove you can pay for it and if you have decent A-levels of the SAT. For medical school in the U.S., it is a massive disadvantage if you apply without a green card - even if you prove you can pay for it and if you have a U.S. undergraduate degree with top grades. It is virtually impossible to get into a U.S. medical school with an undergraduate degree earned outside of the U.S. or Canada - regardless of whether you have a green card or not (there are some exceptions - please see my other posts).

From experience, the U.S. undergraduate degree is much more general than a British degree, but graduate degrees in the U.S. (Ph.D., medical degrees etc.) are hard to match anywhere else for quality, depth, and breadth. That's my biased opinion.

Good luck!