Hey guys,
So I am an international student studying in the US, and will receive a BS degree in biochemistry in a year. I have just started to consider going into medicine, but as an international student in the US that's almost impossible. So I started researching on studying medicine in Germany, and I found that I would only need a high school certificate, not a Bachelor's degree, to apply to German medical schools. The problem is, I got my high school diploma in the US not from a local high school, but from a high school completion program in a community college, so basically I took college classes to fulfill high school requirements. I know that is not the most traditional way of getting through high school, so my question is, is that going to be a problem when I apply to medical schools in Germany? Or with a bachelor's degree, is my degree more important than my high school certificate? BTW my college GPA is in the 3.8-3.9 range.
I am lost right now, so any help will be much much appreciated!
Since you are neither an EU/EEC citizen nor have a German Abitur, you have to apply to each medical school individually rather than through Hochschulstart (the public agency that processes medical school applications for German and other EU applicants). This is explained at
http://www.hochschulstart.de/index.php?id=8 Many universities use the public agency uni-assist to process such non-EU applications for them; see
http://www.uni-assist.de/uni-assist-mitglieder.html for a list of universities that use uni-assist. Also, see
http://www.hochschulstart.de/index.php?id=4457 for a complete list of public medical schools in Germany. Some of these also accept students starting with the spring term (i.e. April), see
http://www.hochschulstart.de/index.php?id=4305 for a list.
(There are only a handful of private medical schools which are pretty insignificant - an established one in Witten-Herdecke, and two new ones in Kassel and Nuremberg. Another new one in Brandenburg (Neuruppin / Brandenburg an der Havel) is supposed to start next year.)
As you probably know, medicine is a six-year undergraduate degree in Germany. It is possible that you may get some credit, but don't expect too much. (I know somebody with a German BS and MS in biology, who managed to get some credit for biology, chemistry, and physics.)
At most universities, medicine follows the traditional German pattern: two years of Vorklinik (pre-clinical years, i.e. mostly anatomy (including histology and embryology), biochemistry, and physiology, plus some biology, chemistry, physics, psychology, sociology, etc.) followed by four years of Klinik (clinical years, of which you'll have 2.5 years of classes, 0.5 year of short rotations in all clinical subjects, and 1 year of Praktisches Jahr, which means 4 months of surgery, 4 months of internal medicine, and 4 months in a field of your own choice). In addition to that you need to do three months of nursing (!) internship during the first year years of the degree, and four months of "Famulatur" (clinical rotations) during the subsequent four years of the degree (during the term breaks).
Medicine is one of the "Staatsexamen" degrees, which means that, in addition to university exams, you /have/ to pass state exams to be able to continue/finish. There has been (yet another) reform of this system recently: the medical state exam now has three parts again, the first part taking place after the first two years of the degree, the second part after another three years (i.e. before the Praktisches Jahr), and the third part at the end (i.e. after the Praktisches Jahr). University exams can be retaken twice to five times depending on the university (or as often as you want in Köln), but the state exams can always only be retaken twice. If you fail a state exam three times, you will be barred forever from studying medicine in Germany.
However, there are also some universities that offer a "Modellstudiengang" or "Reformstudiengang", i.e. more modern types of medical curricula, where you usually have blocks on organ systems, i.e., say, several weeks for the respiratory system, covering related anatomy, biochemistry, physiology, etc. As far as I'm aware there are currently such degrees being offered in Aachen, Berlin, Bochum, Düssendorf, Hamburg, Hannover, Heidelberg, Köln [Cologne], Mannheim, and Oldenburg. It would probably be more difficult for you to get credit when entering a "Modellstudiengang" or "Reformstudiengang", since subjects are not as clearly separated from each other in such a curriculum.
So yeah, essentially you'd have to apply to universities individually. The deadline is normally January 15 for a summer term (April) start or July 15 for a fall term (October) start, but universities can choose to have January 15 as the only deadline for non-EU applicants. In terms of getting help in English, it will probably be easiest to apply to universities that use uni-assist - but in order to be able to apply you need to have solid German skills anyway (again depending on each university). It's somewhat easier to get a med school spot as a non-EU applicant than as an EU applicant, and studying medicine in Germany is extremely cheap (currently about $1,200-14,500 for the entire degree, depending on the university, usually including public transit... the current average is about $600-900 per year), but keep in mind that everything is in German - all the classes and all the exams. Also keep in mind that it'll take you six rather than four years, and that it will be somewhat more difficult for you to do a U.S. residency afterwards. Your non-standard high school diploma will probably raise some questions, but assuming your BS is from a regionally accredited institution, that shouldn't be too much of a problem.
