Oxford University --> US Medical School

[dandedo2]

I just wondered if there would be anyone with a similar experience to my situation.

I'm currently in my penultimate year of an undergraduate degree at Oxford University in the UK, studying Human Sciences, which if you look it up on their web site is a mixture of biology, genetics, and some social sciences too. Quite interesting.

Anyway I would ultimately like to practice medicine in the US. To get into a decent residency I am best off to attend medical school in the US, even if it is mightily expensive. HOWEVER everywhere seems to require that undergraduate degrees come from a North American university, or there is at least a years undergraduate study in the North America. This however isn't an option on my course. I know that Stanford and Dartmouth would consider my degree acceptable, with A Levels often being viewed as acceptable for pre-requisites as they are the equivalent of first year in a North American college (in the UK university is 3 years long).

So are there any other places that people know would consider me? Oxford is one of the best universities in the world and I am being told it is not acceptable because it is on the wrong continent. Are there medical schools that are known as being more flexible?

And also if I were to get a score in excess of 40 on the MCAT, would that make the admissions people more likely to overlook that my degree is not from North America.

As a final point, our entire degree classification is down to our finals- exams at the very end. Nothing else counts- we have no running GPA as such. How would that affect an application to somewhere that considered a degree from Oxford/the UK? I would have a predicted grade but little else other than a set of exams at the end of the first year that are in effect pass/fail.

Thank you for any advice

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[RogueUnicorn]

getting a score in excess of 40 is a one in a thousand occurrence. just saying.

 

[dandedo2]

however that seems more likely than there being schools that accept students from the UK- irrespective of how good they are.

 

[c5212]

A few med schools i've seen that admit foreign students generally require them to have one year of undergraduate coursework at an accredited US school- i believe that Harvard and JHopkins both have that policy. I think you're just going to have to go to each schools website that your interested in and check about their policy for admitting foreign students 🙁

 

[Tin Man]

Anyway I would ultimately like to practice medicine in the US. To get into a decent residency I am best off to attend medical school in the US, even if it is mightily expensive. HOWEVER everywhere seems to require that undergraduate degrees come from a North American university, or there is at least a years undergraduate study in the North America. This however isn't an option on my course. I know that Stanford and Dartmouth would consider my degree acceptable, with A Levels often being viewed as acceptable for pre-requisites as they are the equivalent of first year in a North American college (in the UK university is 3 years long).

Eh... well, to get a decent residency, you have to have a good medical education. Typical American arrogance deems that the best medical educations come from the US, but it doesn't mean that the only good residencies go out to American students. Although, I will say that to get into the very most competitive residencies, you're really going to need to show your stuff.

Now, in terms of attending an American medical school with an undergraduate degree, it would actually be a good idea to email the admissions groups for each school you'd be interested in attending and letting them know your situation. I KNOW that medical schools, even my local state school, will accept students from other countries. Granted, it's not easy, as there are so many American students alone fighting for so few spots, but if you're coming from a place like Oxford, you're certainly going to be considered competitive as long as your grades back you up. Like I said, contact the schools and see, because most of them don't write explicit application instructions for foreign students, mainly to keep the number of applications from exponentially growing as they get applications from sub-par students from every country in the world...

And also if I were to get a score in excess of 40 on the MCAT, would that make the admissions people more likely to overlook that my degree is not from North America.

Like a previous poster said, this is a pretty tough score to achieve, even for smart people. If you can score that, I don't think you'd have a problem of having your application looked at. However, I would NOT bank on getting that kind of a score. From what I've experienced, MOST of the people who make that kind of score did so more through luck than actually knowing the material. 🙂

As a final point, our entire degree classification is down to our finals- exams at the very end. Nothing else counts- we have no running GPA as such. How would that affect an application to somewhere that considered a degree from Oxford/the UK? I would have a predicted grade but little else other than a set of exams at the end of the first year that are in effect pass/fail.

Hmm... the best people to talk to about this might be Oxford employees. I would be very, very surprised if a place like Oxford didn't have some method of transferring their credits into an American GPA.

The problem with pass/fail is that you could pass by a very, very small margin, and it would be the same result as if you were the top of your class. You're supposed to be compared to the top students in the US, so showing that you merely passed all of the same classes they did is not going to mean anything.

With that said, if you can get your final score on the exam to reflect your final grade in the course (since apparently you don't have any other grades in the classes), then that might transfer to a GPA. It's a brutal way of getting a grade, but to be honest, it's not unheard of to happen hear in the US either. But unless there exists some way of dealing with this situation that I am not aware of, you're going to have a hard time with the admissions committees if you don't have some sort of qualitative way to compare yourself to the other students, even if you weren't an English student.

 

[Isisfusion]

I was under the impression that US schools accept international students who don't have an opportunity to apply to a medical school in their country.