Yes, you can do that.
You should know that if you're planning to come back to the US, it doesn't matter if you have the Melbourne "MD" or the "MBBS" from anywhere else. They're really the same degree. I did an MBBS at Sydney, but once I got my ECFMG certification in the US, all of my qualifications were translated as "MD." My name tag says "MD," the hospital system has me down as an "MD," the accreditation body has me as an "MD," etc.
Agree with the above. If you want to go to the US with a foreign degree, you have to jump through a million extra hoops. In my class, 50-60% of the people who wanted to go back to North America didn't end up doing it, just because it requires so much extra effort on your own. If you go to med school in the US or the Caribbean, those things are already taken care of for you.
For the purpose of admissions, those rankings are essentially irrelevant beyond the fact that Melbourne is better than the average international school. The only benefit is that Melbourne has name recognition in the US, just like U.Sydney, U.London, U.Chicago, NYU, UCLA, etc. I would argue that I had more name recognition as a Sydney grad than I would have had as a Melbourne grad, just because Americans are more exposed to Sydney than Melbourne (probably because of the Olympics, or because they read on Wikipedia that Sydney is the biggest city in Australia, or because Sydney is a more popular vacation destination because of the weather/beaches, or because of the Opera House). Of course, the difference is minor. I agree that U.Melbourne has slightly stronger research opportunities than U.Sydney (hence the higher ranking), but I think that Sydney is at least as good of a med school because Sydney is a more diverse city, which allows you to see wider diversity of clinical cases. Also, Sydney hospitals have a wider catchment area and a wider rural network, since NSW is bigger than Victoria. On the other hand, better research tends to attract better faculty, which is how Melbourne earned their higher ranking. Melbourne also seems to have better facilities, and is a more comfortable city in which to live.
But all that aside, when students come to the US from overseas, they don't get ignored due to concerns about the quality of their education (although that might be a concern). It's because they're a risk, since the program director can't be 100% sure that this student was educated in the same way that would be expected of an American student. It's not that they're assuming that the student is inferior - just that it's not as safe of a bet as an American grad. The risk will be lower with a Melbourne grad than it would be with a Notre Dame grad, but in general, people tend to be more cautious with IMGs in general. And it's fair - in Australia, med students don't have the same clinical responsibilities that they do in the US. You can get through med school without really showing up for your rotations for more than 10-15 hours a week. Most of your basic training happens in PGY1/2. In the US, the same level of training happens when you're a sub-intern in your 4th year of med school. As a PGY1 in the US, I do much of the same type of work that my colleagues did as PGY2-3's in Australia. As PGY1s in Australia, interns usually just follow a more senior doctor around and write notes, do paperwork, etc. I rarely ever saw an intern make a clinical decision in Australia. And because of that, an Australian med school grad is, in fact, less prepared for the American system than an American grad. Of course, you can overcome that by doing a couple of med school rotations in the US.
No way dude. I studied for the MCAT for a total of maybe 60-80 hours over 2 months (after barely studying during college) and got a 35, which was 94-95th percentile at the time. For Step 1, I put in literally 10 times that many hours over 2-3 months (on top of studying daily during the first 2 years of med school), and got 227, which was barely above average. For Step 2, I probably studied 30-40 hours a week for 2 months while on rotations, and got 242, which is again less than one standard deviation above the mean.
The MCAT has much more critical thinking, while the USMLE is very reliant on knowing specific information. You can answer 50% of the questions on the MCAT with a high school science education and high intellect, while you can probably only answer about 5% of USMLE questions if you haven't been to med school
I don't know man... in my book, Melbourne is definitely a very close second to Sydney.
