Going to medical school i china

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Alve24

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Hi, this is my second question here, but i wanted to hear some of the different perspectives on this. I'm friends with this kid who goes to my church and he is also majoring in biomedical sciences. I noticed his older brother was gone for a while and asked him what happened, he said his older brother went to medical school in china. I was surprised because most people come to the U.S to study things like medicine and then head back to their country not the other way around. I asked him why he did it and he said it was to beat the cost of medical school. I asked if his older brother knew the language and he said no he didn't and since it was a last minute thing he took a year to learn it. His brother after some years away came back and is now doing his residency at the local hospital.

Is this something you guys would do? or would you guys just take the student loans out? or is it just crazy overall. Hoping to hear your different takes on it.

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Person disappears for a while and the explanation is that they went to medical school in China as "last minute thing"? Unlikely.
Person spends a year learning chinese and is able to successfully complete medical school in Chinese? Unlikely.
American completes medical school in China and gets internship in the USA? Unlikely.

Far more likely scenario: He got arrested on a drug charge, went to prison, and is now working in the hospital on work release and maybe wants to one day take pre-med classes.
 
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Person disappears for a while and the explanation is that they went to medical school in China as "last minute thing"? Unlikely.
Person spends a year learning chinese and is able to successfully complete medical school? Unlikely
American completes medical school in China and gets internship in the USA? Unlikely.

Far more likely scenario: He got arrested on a drug charge, went to prison, and is now working in the hospital on work release and maybe wants to one day take pre-med classes.
Would think the same, but i seen him in person and he's doing great. He told me and my mom that he was doing his residency at the local hospital. I wanted to press him for more information, but i get uncomfortable with strangers listening in on our conversation and his mom was there and I'm really bad with making small talk with parents for some reason.(And i don't know if its a year or 2, but i heard the best way to learn a language is to practice it daily.)
 
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Learned Chinese in a year? Uh right.... I know people who spend 2 years straight living in Hong Kong speaking nothing but Chinese every single day to try and learn it and even after all that they can barely speak more than the basics. And then this guys supposedly learned medicine in Chinese? I'm calling BS on this one. This guy was either yanking your chain or honestly had no idea what his brother actually did.
 
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Learned Chinese in a year? Uh right.... I know people who spend 2 years straight living in Hong Kong speaking nothing but Chinese every single day to try and learn it and even after all that they can barely speak more than the basics. And then this guys supposedly learned medicine in Chinese? I'm calling BS on this one. This guy was either yanking your chain or honestly had no idea what his brother actually did.
Yeah, maybe the way I'm telling it seems unreliable. I never personally talked to the brother, but it's something i heard and i was just thinking about it. Next time i see him ill ask what he did.
 
There are no shortcuts to obtaining an MD with a high likelihood of matching a residency in the future it seems. Working hard to repair an application (MCAT studying for a year, clinical experience, GPA repair, applying DO) for a year or two is a much better investment of time, and shows better impulse control than trying to take the easy way and go over seas. I know you don't specifically mention these things, but that seems to be the general mentality of those who are looking for solace in some back up plan, to those looking for some other way, or who have given up and applied to the Caribbean or any other low hanging fruit. In actuality these desperate people are the low hanging fruit to overseas for profits, and it is best to exclude these options from your mind.
 
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Yeah I'm friends with a chinese linguist that took yearS to learn just his assigned dialect with intensive classes and I don't think even he could get through medical school in china (side note his MCAT prior to joining the military was 36 so it's not like he just wasn't sciency enough to make it)
 
From what I heard, some prestige schools in China has affiliation with the US medical school/residency program(Ex. Fudan University medical school is affiliated with Harvard medical school). Their courses are mostly taught in English and is usually longer than 4 years. So I would say it is possible that his brother did it and got a decent residency position in the US. It is much cheaper and the program is apparently extremely competitive.

I'm guessing it is probably similar to the Duke university in Singapore kinda deal (Duke-NUS MD program)
 
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Many residency programs list their current residents on their websites. You could look him up on the local hospital's residency program website. Sometimes Googling a resident's name turns up a practice location, too.
 
Good information from @gonnif ! So there you go OP. It will never be easy either way(perhaps even more difficult).

I do know for a fact though, that some medical school in China has some serious cheating problems on their tests. A few of my friends went to China to study medicine and told me that the older students had a hard time passing the board in my home country. So unless the school has some good affiliation (like the one in Singapore) do not go abroad.
 
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