Studying Abroad Premed classes

[stgermaine]

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Hi

I'm trying to study abroad in England or Spain. I am a sophomore and I'm just taking gen chem right now. I'll be taking some bio classes during spring semester and during the summer. I'll also be taking the fall semester organic chemistry during the summer.

My main questions are
1. Do most med schools take grades from premed classes taken outside of the US and is it recommended?
2. Is graduating in 5 years that bad? I'm not double majoring or anything..just doing psychology and premed. If it's not that bad, I'll probably be studying abroad for a year.

Thanks

 

[theWUbear]

Hi

I'm trying to study abroad in England or Spain. I am a sophomore and I'm just taking gen chem right now. I'll be taking some bio classes during spring semester and during the summer. I'll also be taking the fall semester organic chemistry during the summer.

My main questions are
1. Do most med schools take grades from premed classes taken outside of the US and is it recommended?
2. Is graduating in 5 years that bad? I'm not double majoring or anything..just doing psychology and premed. If it's not that bad, I'll probably be studying abroad for a year.

Thanks

Most med schools, to the best of my knowledge, take only grades from classes taken at accredited US schools (not international besides Canada). You would be wise to ensure you fulfill all premed requirements in the US.

You may get the question "so why did you do college in five years?", but stating "because I wanted to ensure I was able to study abroad for a year, which was important to me because blah blah" would wrap up any concern there sufficiently.

Consider summer classes if you're having trouble finding space to fulfill requirements and still fit in study abroad. I'm doing study abroad next semester in Spain! Hopefully you can work it out for yourself sometime too.

 

[misseskwee]

Hello fellow Psych major! 🙂
Med schools will consider all your grades from every class in any post-secondary institution, whether in the US or abroad. But with regards to prereqs for medical school, I believe they need to be from an accredited US school. Other courses such as humanities, or liberal arts, taken during a study abroad program shouldn't cause any problems, though.
And finishing college in 5 years shouldn't raise questions, really, assuming your grades are good and they see you've been doing a lot of ECs as well in those 5 years.
Goodluck!

 

[Barcu]

I would not take prereqs abroad. Whether they count or not is irrelevant. You want to have as much fun as possible while abroad.

Some programs are Pass/Fail. Find those.

 

[eli20]

I took my first semester of physics abroad because it was the only way for me to stay on schedule and get to go abroad (and just for the record it was 1000x better than my physics 2 class at my home institution).

Important considerations are that needing to take a science class (most likely in English unless you are very very proficient in another language) limits your choice of where to study abroad immensely. Also you want to make sure that you are going through a program that will convert your grades and give you a transcript with grades from a US institution (I'm pretty sure that both Arcadia and Butler do this, and are two of the bigger study abroad coordinators).

Edit: I forgot - Study abroad! It was literally the highlight of my undergrad years and I'll never have the opportunity to do something like it again.