Nopes not a joke. And yes everywhere in this world except the US and canada does the combined UG and med school. Infact, the med school degree that you do there is itself termed a "bachelors of medicine", so med school really is treated as an undergrad (my humanity courses in undergrad don't really contribute to my becoming a doctor anyway so if you think about it, that's just an extra 4 years of schooling...u don't need a 4 year degree for a years worth of premed class
😛) . And besides, the high schools there are much more accelerated as far as the material goes (which is really a shame). The generic high school education that everyone gets is the equivalent of AP high school courses. So in a way students are prepared to go to medical school straight after highschool itself. For example, after my highschool, I received college equivalent credit for my high school coursework for gen chem 1 and 2 with labs, General biology 1 and 2, Physics 1 and 2 with labs, and calc 1 and 2. So even when I applied here, my med school prereq credits all came from my coursework in Pakistan. Anyway, so yea they have a 5 year medical school program after highschool. And what usually most international students from India and Pakistan do is that they take their USMLE exams after med school. Most of them do fairly well too considering that they take a good 3 - 6 months to prepare for the exam. It's almost unheard of for anyone to get less than the 90th percentile score (95+ percentile is the norm).
There are ofcourse advantages and disadvantages to going through that system. The biggest advantage is that you don't end up under HUGE HUGE HUGE amounts of debt (about 1 or 2 thousand dollars a year for tuition). And you save 2 - 3 years of your life. My sister, who went through that route and is now a practicing doctor in Boston, was done with med school at 24 and residency at 28 ish.
On the other hand, the biggest disadvantage ofcourse is that if you've been educated internationally there is little to no chance of you getting into any competitive residency program. If you want to go into something like internal medicine then it works out. But radiology, dermatology, even surgery, you can just forget about all of that.
Though there is a lot more clinical exposure in pakistan. Much less rules that you need to follow lolz...and more or less no such thing as ever getting sued. Oh and u have a plethora of dead bodies to dissect.
And I really wasn't kidding about the competition. Imagine a country with a population of 170 million where everyone grows up either wanting to become an engineer, a doctor, or rarely a business student. There is usually no 4th acceptable career option - parental expectations normally don't allow it. And ofcourse the most desirable profession is medicine so most people are brain washed from a fairly early age to want to become doctors. And there is little to no concept of "exploring one's interest" in those countries. When I came here to america, exploring different subjects was a somewhat novel concept to me. It's interesting how almost all students pick a career track in 9th grade. They either choose pre-engineering subjects, pre-medicine subjects, or pre-business (sometimes pre-law too). So really you make that decision of what you want to do for the rest of your life when your around 16. So combine a lot of students going for medicine with the fact that there are not as many medical schools in the country...then you get absurd competition where about 92% of those trying don't make it and have to do something else
🙂
There's a reason that Indians are over represented in medical schools, our parents still truly believe that there are only 2 or 3 respectable professions. And most of us are expected to end up in one of these professions. Anything else would be the equivalent of disappointing a lot of people.
