Dear everybody, I’m a 35-year-old full time mom, having a dream of being medical doctor since I was a child. I was born in China and finished undergraduate study in a Chinese university in 1998. The major was biochemistry and molecular biology. In 2001 I finished M.S. study in plant molecular biology. In 2002 I went to Sweden for PhD study in plant molecular biology and got the degree in 2008. After the PhD study I immigated to USA with my husband and worked as a post-doc doing human cancer research until my baby was born in September 2010. During my maternal leave, my husband was required to relocate by his new employer. I had to resign my job and stayed at home with the baby since then. I’ve never attended an american university.
I had taken all the required courses >10 years ago, and the undergraduate GPA was awful. 
I was not a good undergraduate student. The GPA from M.S. study looks much better. The courses taken during PhD study were always scored as pass/fail.
The research went well though. I got 4 publications as first author. My supervisor was pretty happy with me. I also had one first author publication from my 1 and half years post-doc work.
So please, is there anything I can do to make myself competitive? Or is it realistic at all for me to try a medical school?
Any advice is appreciated. Thanks
- flower_cat Said:
I've never attended an american university...
I had taken all the required courses >10 years ago, and the undergraduate GPA was awful.
So please, is there anything I can do to make myself competitive? Or is it realistic at all for me to try a medical school?
I had taken all the required courses >10 years ago, and the undergraduate GPA was awful.
So please, is there anything I can do to make myself competitive? Or is it realistic at all for me to try a medical school?
hey Flower Cat
Rule 1: Take a Breath.
Your PhD, MS, and publications will be enormously helpful but you have work to do to get prepped for an application.
All american medical schools require at least 30 credits of work done at an accredited american or accredited university. Since all your prereqs are over 10 years old and from overseas, you should do most, if not all of them over. This will also give you the opportunity to raise your GPA up.
From your profile, I see that you are in Maryland. There are several good schools with both formal and informal post-bac programs, including one I think at University of Maryland called "science in the evening" which may work well for a mom with an infant.
Also, I do not know the process of getting foreign transcripts evaluated but I hear it can take a long time. So you should start looking at that and see what needs to get done.
You ask is it realistic to go into medicine. I think for most people it is realistic to investigate the process, get some post-bac work done, and see if you can make your dream into a plan and make that plan into a reality.
Thank you so much for your reply! I had some quick search and yes there are some post-bac programs available in Maryland and DC.
What also worries me is I wonder wheather most of the medical schools do accept a foreign bacholer degree, or they theoretically accept buy the accual chance is almost neglected.
- flower_cat Said:
Thank you so much for your reply! I had some quick search and yes there are some post-bac programs available in Maryland and DC.
What also worries me is I wonder wheather most of the medical schools do accept a foreign bacholer degree, or they theoretically accept buy the accual chance is almost neglected.
What also worries me is I wonder wheather most of the medical schools do accept a foreign bacholer degree, or they theoretically accept buy the accual chance is almost neglected.
Perception and context will be as important as anything else. Your masters and especially PhD from sweden will be a great asset in "validating" your abilities.
As for actual acceptance of a degree, it is all very confusing. Most US medical schools require a minimum of 90 undergraduate credits and seem to indicate that these must be from a accredited US or Canadian school. Yet, most have conflicting or confusing policies on this. I am giving you a sampling from research I did. Bold and Italicized indicates quotes directly from medical school web page
University of South Florida: "Does USF COM accept credit from undergraduate work in a foreign country? No. "
perfectly clear -- absolutely not
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Albert Einstein: "Students who have earned baccalaureate degrees outside the U.S. or Canada are required to complete at least one year of formal coursework in the sciences (about 30 credit hours) in an accredited American college or university prior to making application to the College of Medicine. It is recommended that such students also take courses in English if it is not the student’s first language."
perfectly clear -- here is the mechanism in which to do so
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Stanford: "Applicants must have received an undergraduate degree from an accredited college or university by the time of matriculation"
perfectly open to interpretation. Do they mean only US/Canadian based schools? I was informed yes by admissions but also told they have accepted people with Oxford University England, Cambridge University England, Tokyo University Japan,
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John Hopkins: "Accredited Institution. All applicants must be or have previously been in attendance at an institution on the list entitled “Accredited Institutions of Postsecondary Education,’’ authorized and published by the American Council on Education, One DuPont Circle, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. ... Preparation in foreign universities, in most cases, must be supplemented by a year or more of work in an approved university in the United States."
Perfectly contradictory: The ACE list above lists only US schools yet mechanism for foreign universities is noted
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SUNY Downstate: "You must have completed at least 90 semester credits of study from a Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) regional accreditation association (e.g., Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools) college or university. "
(but in the following paragraph it says)
If you were educated abroad, a minimum of two full time semesters (one academic year) of college study at a CHEA regionally accredited college/university in the United States prior to application is required. In addition, you must demonstrate English proficiency, both verbally and in writing, if your prior medium of instruction was in another language. If a substantial amount of your education has been completed abroad, or if you have completed science prerequisites abroad, you are required to submit a course by course educational credentials evaluation from a National Association of Credential Evaluation Services (NACES) agency, such as World Educational Services to enable the Committee on Admissions to assess prior academic performance."
Perfectly contradictory:
(I should send off a slew of letters to office of general counsel of these schools for clarification)
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Lastly, in the MSAR (Medical School Admissions Requirements), which has a summary in a standardized two-page format for each allopathic medical school, under "Acceptances & Matriculation Data" in the middle of the right-hand page, this question is asked and answered:
Applications accepted from International Applicants: which is followed by a yes or no
While this appears to be directed to residency status of international students currently studying at US institutions, it does raise the possibility that schools answering yes may accept foreign credits or degrees.
Hi. I will likely share my opinions on the matter as I am in the same boat.
Claiming credits based on your foreign education, at leat for the core pre-reqs is a mistake because:
- 1) You are at disadvantage as US credits is the norm for almost all students (what one thinks about the education here and abroad doesn’t matter)
2) Due to cultural differences, the grades are usually poor compared to the US education system. I have graduate in the top 1-5% percent of my class each year (classes were 100+ students, I ranked 3,4 and even first in my post graduate degree). My average based on grades were about 12.3/20 which is not even a C in the US. Yet that is enough to get a distinction (at least in France). That said, adcoms will likely see a poor performance. My International GPA (meaningless), based on a credential evaluation is about 3.1 or something. Let me tell you that even the people who ranked first my classes didn’t get a 3.2!
3) Finally, since each school has its policy, you will have to do a lot of research and this will naturally limit the number of schools you can apply to.
The bottom line is that I highly recommend taking pre-reqs here (ideally in 4 year), but at least in a CC just to show that you can get good grades and that you are academically fit.
Due to your background, perhaps adcoms may not require the whole 90 credits (except when clearly specified like university of Florida). Also remember that you can take some CLEP and AP credits for things that are not core pre-reqs. It kind of helps reach the limit (myself I piled up a few of those and intend to take more) as these are again OK in many schools (at least the schools I want)
Finally make sure that when you take pre-reqs, you maitain a GPA as high as possible. Also your MCAT has to be decent if not above the norm.
Good luck.