Indian-american going to medical school in India

asimhaqq00 said:

I'm an indian-american here in texas thinking about going to medical school in India, Mumbai specifically. I had a few questions that I would like to ask. They have more to do with the curriculum of India, quality of medical education and the difficulty of adjustment for a foreigner.

1. What are the subjects tested every year for of the 5.5 yrs MBBS in India?
2. How often are there exams?
3. What are the exams like? I've heard different things about this. Some say there are hard because of essay questions, other say they are easy because you only need 33% to pass.
4. What are the quality of the classes in Basic science and clinical years? I've heard people mostly self study because classes are a joke if not non-existent.

Click to expand...

Just wondering, why do you want to go to India for medical school?

asimhaqq00 said:

I'm an indian-american here in texas thinking about going to medical school in India, Mumbai specifically. I had a few questions that I would like to ask. They have more to do with the curriculum of India, quality of medical education and the difficulty of adjustment for a foreigner.

1. What are the subjects tested every year for of the 5.5 yrs MBBS in India?
2. How often are there exams?
3. What are the exams like? I've heard different things about this. Some say there are hard because of essay questions, other say they are easy because you only need 33% to pass.
4. What are the quality of the classes in Basic science and clinical years? I've heard people mostly self study because classes are a joke if not non-existent.

Click to expand...

1. Year 1 - Anatomy, Biochemisty, and Physiology.
Year 2 - PSM, Patho, Pharmac, Micro, and Forensic Medicine.
Year 3 - PSM, ENT, Ortho, Opthalm, Surgery, Medicine.
Year 4 - Internship(6 months in village[require you to speak, read, and write language Hindi, Gujarati, etc.], 6 months in city)

2. These exams are often in 1st year. They are reduced to only main exams in 2nd year at my school and 3rd year, with MCQ test as well, but they have very little weight-age in the end.

3. At my college(NHLMMC) and district(Gujarat University), we have 50% pass, not 33%. I won't say the grading is hard, nor easy. If you know how to organize, present the information, draw diagrams, attempt each question, and know your information, then its easy to get 60%. The rankers here get 80%, nothing more.

4. Yes and No. Yes because 90% of the learning you are going to have is from self-study. Usually, reading first and understand, then writing the short note on a separate book, and draw diagrams during commercials in TV, and during my free time is how I managed to get 78% in my 1st year.

Its hard, because you will have difficult understanding, and if you do, consider doing tuition (don't let your classmate & teachers find out that you are doing these, otherwise you'll have trouble fitting in and hard time passing the practicals.) or ask your professors for help.

No because some of the materials that you learn in lecture comes helpful in the exams as well, because they are given from personal experiance that sometimes the book doesn't have. So don't ignore the lectures. Also, people will say that they are not reading at all, but THEY ARE READING AT HOME!!! They won't show it, but they ARE.

From DAY 1, EVERYONE studies crazily. Trust me, I had the experience, and you don't want to work last 3 months sleep deprived, working your ass off to study for exam. Its terrible. So start from Day 1, even if you know it. Revise it, and go on to the next topic.

Click to expand...

Why do you want to study medical school in India?

Let me give you a fact: You come to India, it'll be harder for you get residency in US, and almost impossible when YOU graduate. FACT. It is getting harder and harder year by year.

I don't mean the scare you, but just letting you know the fact. But the advantage is that you'll not get this type of clinical experience ANYWHERE. India is the one of the best place for clinical experience.

asimhaqq00 said:

Well the main reason is that I can go after high school and skip undergrad. Plus I have indian heritage.

I understand the difficulty when it comes to matching but I was wondering whether this was only with competitive specialties or also with more easy specialties such as family medicine and internal medicine?

Click to expand...

i went straight into medicine after high school and unless you want to work in India, I wouldn't recommend studying medicine in India.

India will be incredibly tough competition. If you were born and raised in the US, nothing you know will prepare you for the type of competition you will face in India. They will tear you up to pieces.

If you want to practice in the US, stay in the US, you won't regret it. After you get a US MD, going to India will probably be a lot easier than the other way around.

asimhaqq00 said:

Thanks for the info but I think you may be missing something. I hear MBBS in India is 5.5 years but you only have 4 yrs here? What about the other 1.5 yrs?

Click to expand...

Year 1: 2 semesters
Year 2: 3 semesters
Year 3: 4 semesters
Year 4: 2 semesters

Total semesters: 11 semesters = 5.5 years

asimhaqq00 said:

care to elaborate? what is it about the competition that is so difficult?

Click to expand...

Medstart is right.

1. Expect to fail more often, even if you were a 4.0 GPA in high school with 5+ AP classes.

2. People will mock you for being dump and making a ******ed choice coming to India. They'll think you are a dumb person because you chose the other way around.

3. 1st year is the toughest, because it'll take time for you to settle down in India, and it'll take you extra time for understanding the methods of exams.

4. Be prepared to get ****ted at by your family members, when they find out your exam results, that you failed. Its a tough life here, its not like US.

5. Why is the competition so difficult? Because the students will MAKE you feel that you are not smart, and you are dumb. You'll realize it after your first few exams, and after they start asking you questions(difficult) relating to the subjects.

6. The professors will tear you apart for doing something soooo minor. I'm dead serious. ex: drinking water during class, wearing sandals instead of shoes, etc.

asimhaqq00 said:

This seems like bullying more than competition. Is bullying really that bad? I mean this is medical school?

Click to expand...

Things are different in countries like India, China, Korea. Students there who get into medical school have gone to high school in classes of 50-60 students for 8 hours a day, then do tutoring all the way until 10pm when they go to sleep. Recess, extracurricular activities and fun are not heard of. Anyone who tries to do those things don't make it into medical school. Corporal punishment is not unheard of and the teacher commands the utmost respect unlike in the US.

The US is very soft compared to what those students go through. You would be like a green soldier joining a group of battle-hardened warriors. I would honestly advise against it. A lot of people always think the grass is greener on the other side, but if you know by moving from the US to India for medicine you are doing the opposite of what so many people want to do (which is move from India to the US).

I'm not saying don't do it under any circumstances, just don't say we didn't warn you here on SDN.

zeldajae said:

Let me give you a fact: You come to India, it'll be harder for you get residency in US, and almost impossible when YOU graduate.

Click to expand...

Can you please elaborate why it would be harder to get residency for a US citizen?

itzpetergriffin said:

Can you please elaborate why it would be harder to get residency for a US citizen?

Click to expand...

This is because you didn't train in the US medical system. They will always prefer an American graduate because they were taught with for them accredited teaching. i.e. they know that a US grad will know such and such. An American grad will also have experience in US hospitals.

At the end of the day they will always prefer a US grad to an IMG US citizen because they don't value your education as much as a US one.

I'm an American, finishing up my 4th year of medical school in the US and applying for residency. Saw this post and just had to say something.

1) Agree with everyone above, sounds like good advice to me
2) You mentioned that you want to skip undergrad and go straight to med school.I would advise against this very strongly. Undergrad was one of the BEST times in my entire life. I traveled, met many interesting people from around the world (who were students at undergrad with me), and had so many life-changing experiences to look back on. Undergrad developed my personality and shaped me as a person. I am who I am because of everything I lived through in undergrad. My university was very diverse, with 164 nationalities. Actually 26% of the students were Desi, believe it or not. Everyone I went to undergrad with agreed that it was one of the best times in their lives. It is something that you will never get back and your whole life, you will regret not going to university if you had the chance to do so. I would recommend living at university, meeting people, and opening yourself up to new experiences. You won't regret it.
3) If you are worried about the time spent, I know numerous people who completed their bachelor's degree in 2 years. If you come in with some AP classes, it's not that hard to do. I did it in 3 years, but that's because I wanted to do 2 majors. If you do 1 major, you can do undergrad in 2 years.
4) If you're worried about money, go to a state university so you'll pay in-state tuition which is cheap.
5) Most important thing, and I agree with everyone above, it is extremely difficult to get residency here in the US as a foreign-grad, even for IM and FM, and it is only getting more and more competitive. You will be facing an uphill battle. Whereas if you go to med school in the US, Internal Med and Family Med, as well as many other specialities likes Peds, PMR, Psych, etc will be very easy for you to get. You will pretty much be guaranteed a residency spot somewhere. whereas, if you go to medical school in India, you will end up wasting more time in the end trying hard to get a spot, it can take many years and lots of money. So in the end, you will lose time and money by doing it.

You won't be saving time anyway. Once you get back think about how long its going to take to study for USMLE Step 1 & 2.

You won't have any US clinical experience (as Carib grads do) or Letters of Recommendation from US faculty (they wont care about your Indian LORs)

You will be at a HUGE disadvantage even compared to Carib grads, who are already at a HUGE disadvantage.

This is all assuming you come back. Obviously if you are planning on living in India for the rest of your life then go there and don't look back.

Quick question...

I heard that the U.S was opening up more seats in medicine due to a physician shortage...if this is the case, wouldn't there be a greater number of residency spots open starting this year so that more FMG's can come and pretty much "fill up" the physician shortage???

What I don't understand is, why is it getting harder and harder to get a U.S residency?

How do the professors teach in India? What are there teaching styles? Do they just lecture and we take notes or is there a power point? Also, is there just one big test at the end of each year or will they test us on material covered at random intervals.
Thanks.

040111333 said:

Quick question...

I heard that the U.S was opening up more seats in medicine due to a physician shortage...if this is the case, wouldn't there be a greater number of residency spots open starting this year so that more FMG's can come and pretty much "fill up" the physician shortage???

What I don't understand is, why is it getting harder and harder to get a U.S residency?

Click to expand...

No. Residency positions are not increasing relative to the number of new medical school seats. Overall GME growth has averaged 0.9% for the last ten years of data available per the ACGME, while there are over 25% more US medical students over the same period. Things are getting much tougher for IMGs and USIMGs. The number of US MD and DO graduates is expected to equal the number of residency positions sometime in the 2020s, a goal the AMA has had for quite some time, though the DOs are less palatable to them than more MDs.

If you go abroad, you'll be screwing yourself harder than you know. Don't do it.

Mad Jack said:

No. Residency positions are not increasing relative to the number of new medical school seats. Overall GME growth has averaged 0.9% for the last ten years of data available per the ACGME, while there are over 25% more US medical students over the same period. Things are getting much tougher for IMGs and USIMGs. The number of US MD and DO graduates is expected to equal the number of residency positions sometime in the 2020s, a goal the AMA has had for quite some time, though the DOs are less palatable to them than more MDs.

If you go abroad, you'll be screwing yourself harder than you know. Don't do it.

Click to expand...

I understand that the number of residency spots are not equivalent to the number of med school seats. However, despite all that. Would having a US citizenship give you an edge if you were competing for a residency spot with a foreign student with no US citizenship.

cali2.0 said:

I understand that the number of residency spots are not equivalent to the number of med school seats. However, despite all that. Would having a US citizenship give you an edge if you were competing for a residency spot with a foreign student with no US citizenship.

Click to expand...

Not only will you be at a huge disadvantage to a U.S. citizen that has gone to a U.S. school, but you'll be at a disadvantage even when compared to non-U.S. citizen Indians. In 2013, only 60 out of 199 U.S. citizens that went to medical school in India matched. That's just over 30%, not a good match rate at all. 754 of 1961 non-U.S. citizen Indian students matched in 2013. This is still an abysmal match rate at 38.4%, but is around 8% higher than the match rate for U.S. citizens that went to Indian schools. Compare that with the >90% match rates of both MDs and DOs, and you can clearly see the problem with attending school in India.

http://www.ecfmg.org/resources/NRMP...atch-International-Medical-Graduates-2014.pdf

Check page 28 of the PDF for match rates by country of school for both U.S. and non-U.S. IMGs.

cali2.0 said:

I understand that the number of residency spots are not equivalent to the number of med school seats. However, despite all that. Would having a US citizenship give you an edge if you were competing for a residency spot with a foreign student with no US citizenship.

Click to expand...

Yes, but the reality is you probably won't be competitive even with the help of US citizenship.

An American who can't succeed even in America going to India, a country of 1.2 billion incredibly hard working and intelligent people to try to compete with them? US citizenship won't save you from that disaster.

Also don't forget you will be graduating from a medical school in a 3rd world country with a vastly different patient population, disease types, culture and teaching methods. That is a negative.

I'm being harsh because I don't want you to make a wrong decision. Getting into medicine in America has never been easier, why would you go to India and pay so much in donations?

Most of the people posting in this thread are being ridiculous. Medical school in India is just like medical school everywhere else. Yeah there are geniuses there but there are also *******es. India has a caste system that allows someone with the lowest of scores get into medical school, its like an affirmative action. Also, like medical school everywhere, if you study and apply yourself, you will pass. If you study even harder and basically see what the top students in your class are doing you may even surpass them. I went to medical school in India as I had royally screwed up my first year of undergrad and wasn't really feeling making up my history or calculus grades. I started in the top half of my class first year, top 25% in second year and by the final and most difficult year finished in the top 10, I also went to a government school, not a donation school so all my peers had earned their way in through whatever open seat/caste seat (except me haha). Hard work is universal. USMLE's are a matter of studying and applying what you have learned. I will agree you will be hurting in psychiatry and genetics, subjects that aren't as heavily emphasized in India but I still managed a 240+ 250+ with studying <3 months/step so I would say the education was solid and more than anything trained me how to study to understand concepts through the essay system rather than memorizing weird facts for an MCQ exam.

Also, it is not true that you will not have US LoRs. During your internship apply to as many clerkships as you can they are easily attainable and you can get 3-6 months of hands on experience just as if you were a 4th year US med student. You can get 2-3 LoR's easily.

That said I certainly agree with the above posters that you will not save time by going to India. It is 5.5 years and by the time you give your steps and apply for the upcoming cycle it will probably be around 6-7 years. I also agree that this is probably the last year you should look into going to India as by 2020 the chances of matching will become more slim for FMGs. Also, the post directly above me makes a very good point, getting into medical school in the USA has never been easier. New schools are opening every year and D.O. is a very good option. One of my friends went D.O. and got into an M.D. neurosurgery program.