I am 30 years old and have long since wanted to go into medicine. I could not in my country so I did an undergraduate degree and came to the US to pursue medicine. I needed US credit hours hence I completed 2 masters degrees to meet the requirement. I am wondering if these are acceptable or the credit hours have to be from undergraduate coursework? Do I have to undertake an undergraduate degree here in the US before I can be considered for medical school?
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Started by karri
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Do you really think karri has always wished to attend a US medical school, but didn't look into the requirements before starting one of his/her two masters? Considering it was my dream since before I began undergrad, I would have looked into it about $40,000 ago. Maybe that's just me.
Sorry to say this, but most schools are pretty specific at saying it has to be 90 hours of undergraduate coursework, so your graduate coursework may not count.
1) Your Master's credit hours might be counted toward the 90 hour requirement if they are in one of the 4 (Biology, Physics, General Chem and/or Organic Chem) subjects. Example: if you got your MS in Biology, they may substitute a Molecular Biology course for one of your General Bio courses. Similarly, if you did a thesis, they may even waive the lab requirement for Biology.
2) Since your undergrad is from a foreign institution, you have to do all of your pre-reqs, including lab barring those that you might have done in your Master's.
3) For >90% of the schools, you require a permanent resident card at the time of application.
4) Always call the schools that you are applying to individually, each school has different policies and different levels of tolerances.
5) There are a few schools that do not accept students that did not go to high school or did not get their undergrad from a US institution. Save yourself some $, do your homework, and do not apply to those. Example: Mayo. But they are an exception, not the norm
6) Any other questions, feel free to PM me before next week, M2 continues from next Monday, and it is very unlikely that I will respond in a timely fashion.
This is great advice.
The one thing I would add though is that in some states classes must show as undergraduate classes on your transcript in order to be counted towards the 90 hour requirement.
