I would really like to study abroad for a year before I start medical school, but I don't know if it's possible to do it with interviews if I'll be in another country. Has anyone studied abroad before actually being accepted???
Studying Abroad while Applying
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Speaking strictly from the perspective of difficult choices, I was accepted to teach for the JET program in Japan and declined it, because I didn't want to wait to apply and all conventional advice said: be in the U.S. and save the money for traveling to interviews. Do you want the added potential stress of arranging ANYTHING long-distance, from ordinary communication about your secondaries to, hopefully, interviews at schools with a glut of competitive candidates? Let's say you could arrange a phone interview, hypothetically. Is that the impression you'd want to give to an adcom? Unless your activities abroad are so medically compelling or in the name of critical research, I would stay home and spend the year as we all do.
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Unless you are amazingly wealthy and can pay for flights back and forth, studying abroad with interviews is financially not feasible.
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I met someone last year (september 06) who was living in London at the time and applying to US medical schools for the 2007 cycle. At that time, the end of September, she was just finishing her secondaries, which seemed a little late for her plan. To be honest, I kind of lost touch with her and don't know if it worked out, but she couldn't get out of her job in London, so she must have at least tried.
Anyway, it seems to me that if you submit your AMCAS and secondaries soon enough (like as soon as you possibly can), and you're confident that you will get interviews, then you might be able to schedule interviews in similar locations around the same time, because early interview offers usually afford more flexibility in scheduling. This could save on international flights, which could be somewhat affordable depending on where you're flying from. Coming from Europe or Central America would be more possible than say, South Africa.
If you can do some advance planning and organize your interviews, then I think you could do it with minimal international flying. It's certainly going to cost more, and not desireable, but possible. Where are you planning on going?
Anyway, it seems to me that if you submit your AMCAS and secondaries soon enough (like as soon as you possibly can), and you're confident that you will get interviews, then you might be able to schedule interviews in similar locations around the same time, because early interview offers usually afford more flexibility in scheduling. This could save on international flights, which could be somewhat affordable depending on where you're flying from. Coming from Europe or Central America would be more possible than say, South Africa.
If you can do some advance planning and organize your interviews, then I think you could do it with minimal international flying. It's certainly going to cost more, and not desireable, but possible. Where are you planning on going?
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There was a thread on a similar topic a while ago.
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=402656
Note that the last poster (rlwebb) managed to do it from a European location. If you're going to be somewhere (like Africa or parts of Latin America) that has crappy internet service, getting some of those secondary applications done will be hard. Plus, this all depends on which schools you're applying to. If they don't have rolling admissions, it'll be harder to arrange stuff.
