Possibility of Transferring?

[imnodoctor]

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Hi everyone,

I have a question and was hoping to get some feedback: how difficult is it for a medical student to transfer to another medical school?

Some background on my situation: Recently my gf was accepted to a medical school in Chicago. I am currently in my final year of law school in Chicago, but I accepted a job offer in California well before my gf found out about medical school. My gf is from California and wants to go back to California after medical school and/or residency. Because of the nature of the area of law I intend to practice, it makes no sense for me to work in Chicago next year and then move back to California whenever my gf can go back to California as most of the skills/clients I develop in Chicago would be non-transferrable to California. To that extent, my gf thinks that the ideal situation is for me to go out to California next year and for her to transfer to a CA medical school after her first year of med school. How realistic are those aspirations? I am currently attending a top law school, and my experience with law school is that it is fairly easy for students, especially good law students, to transfer law schools. Is this the same for med school? Are personal reasons good enough (they are almost always good enough for law schools)

The prospects of doing 4 years, or 7 years, or however many years of long-distance is daunting and just unworkable in my mind. We have been going out for 4 years now (2 of those were long-distance), so I know just how difficult it is. I can only imagine how difficult it would be to manage a relationship between a busy medical student and a busy, if not busier, junior attorney. So, before we blindly decide that I should head out to CA and wait for my g/f to transfer, I wanted to get some ideas on the difficulty of transferring. If it indeed turns out that transferring will be difficult, then at least I can know that I will need to reassess going back to CA.

Thanks everyone.

 

[bigmuny]

I don't think CA state schools accept transfers period, but you can check their websites. The privates likely will(I know USC will, Stanford maybe not), however, transfer is based on availability of seats, which is based on attrition, which in med schools is low.

 

[GeneGoddess]

I know one MARRIED couple where the wife transfered from a Texas school to Utah (Univ of?) and another MARRIED couple where the wife was denied transfer from one Texas school to another. It's pretty rare.

 

[nachoDoc]

Hi everyone,

I have a question and was hoping to get some feedback: how difficult is it for a medical student to transfer to another medical school?

Thanks everyone.

Very difficult! Both Dean's would need to approve it. But good luck trying.

 

[jennie 21]

Difficult, and uncommon. As someone already said, the availability of transfer spots is based upon the attrition rate...if someone drops out/takes a year off/has to repeat a year then a spot becomes available. The attrition rate is very low (usually ~3% cumulatively over 4 years; something like 97% of students who start med school graduate eventually) so consequentally not many transfer spots are available. Given how competitive getting into UC schools is in the first place I doubt transferring into them would be very easy. Also, when schools do take transfers, it is usually after 2nd year, not after 1st year. So I'd say the chance of your girlfriend successfully transferring to med school somewhere in California is not very good. You might be better off reconsidering going to California and staying in Chicago instead. Sorry. Wish I could be more encouraging, but it's better to be realistic about the chances than to end up stuck cross-country for four more years.