What are my chances

Started by bbEbb
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bbEbb

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Hi guys,

I am a permanent resident and I got my BS from foreign country. I am taking my prereq at community college at part time. My undergrad GPA is 3.7 and my prereq GPA is 4.0 I recently had my foreign transcript evaluated and report says the school I attended is not accredited. If I do really really well on my MCAT, do I have chance to get accepted into Med School. Please, give me your opinion. Thank you
 
Hi guys,

I am a permanent resident and I got my BS from foreign country. I am taking my prereq at community college at part time. My undergrad GPA is 3.7 and my prereq GPA is 4.0 I recently had my foreign transcript evaluated and report says the school I attended is not accredited. If I do really really well on my MCAT, do I have chance to get accepted into Med School. Please, give me your opinion. Thank you

If the school that you received your BS is not accredited, you will not be eligible to apply to US medical schools. I believe all US medical schools require a bachelor's degree from an accredited college in order to enroll. Some medical schools take graduates from foreign colleges, however, those schools are mostly located in the Carribbeans and are not very reputable. Even with a high MCAT score, you will not be eligible for entrance to a US medical school due to the fact that your degree came from an unaccredited college. I suggest that you transfer to an accredited 4 year US college and complete your bachelors degree - or if you're interested in primary care, attend a medical schooll in your home country and apply to the US for medical residency.
 
Thank you for your advise. I thought about caribbean med school specifically, SGU. But my teacher told me that they are changing the rule so that foreign medical graduate can no longer practice medicine in the U.S. If I do my master's degree here in the US and apply to med school, do i have a chance or med school is out of my hand. Thank you
 
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Thank you for your advise. I thought about caribbean med school specifically, SGU. But my teacher told me that they are changing the rule so that foreign medical graduate can no longer practice medicine in the U.S. If I do my master's degree here in the US and apply to med school, do i have a chance or med school is out of my hand. Thank you

Yes, it's true that they may change the rules so that foreign medical school graduates have a harder time getting a residency - however those are only for the competitive residencies (such as dermatology, neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery, etc) not primary care or internal medicine.

As for going to SGU, I'm fairly certainly that you will be able to get a residency coming from one of the Big 3 Carribbean medical schools (SGU, Ross, AUC) - however, we're assuming that those 3 schools are willing to accept someone who graduated from an unaccredited college. You might want to call the admissions office of those schools and ask them about that before you apply there.

As for getting a Master's and applying to medical school. I'm fairly certain all medical school and graduate schools require an undergrad degree from an accredited college as a pre-requisite. Your pre-requisite science classes (physics, chemistry, biology, etc...) are going to have to be taken at the undergrad level classes since graduate level courses rarely fulfill the pre-req requirements.

The problem is if you took these classes or received your degree from an unaccredited college, when you apply to medical school and start filling out your AMCAS form online, you will be asked to select which college you graduated from. There are a going to be a number of drop-down boxes and menus for Country/State/Region where your undergrad school is located. Once get the right country, you will see a list of accredited colleges that you can pick from. You will be asked to select the school from which you received your degree. Colleges that are unaccredited are not in the AMCAS database, so they're not going to be on the list, and you won't be able to claim that you received your undergrad degree.

The best advise that I can give you is to transfer your community college credits to a 4 year US college, take 90 credit hours of coursework (about 3 years if you take accelerated courses), finish your medical pre-requisite, and get a bachelor's degree before applying. This is a long and costly process and I can understand that. The only other alternative that I can think of would be for you to go back to your home country and go to medical school there and appy for residency in the US again.
 
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