What are the chances?

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bigblue

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Hi Everyone,

I'm hoping for a little advice here. My girlfriend wants to go to medical school and I wonder what you think her chances are. She has a BA in music (or piano performance) from a university in China, where she's originally from, and a MA in piano performance from a university in the US. She hasn't taken the MCAT, but has taken the Kaplan review course (2 or 3 times) and scores about 7-7-8 on their practice MCATs. I don't know her undergrad GPA, but while getting her master's she held near 4.0. She's also taken all the prereq's and overall science is about 3.5.

The biggest deal that I see is her communications skills. English is her second language and it's pretty difficult to express herself clearly outside of a set of comfortable phrases that she's picked up over the years. I mean, I can understand her pretty well, but many other people have a hard time following her. Also, she tends to misunderstand things people say to her, and her writing is very bad.

Because of this, she thinks that her best shot for medical school is the Caribbean. Does anyone think this is reasonable? I'm currently in my second year of MS, and can't imagine her getting through classes as rough as anatomy or pharm, especially with her language skills. Also, on a practical level, it may be difficult for her to communicate well with patients. She's been in the US for 10 years now, and I don't think her language is going to get a lot better. My worst nightmare is that she'll be accepted in the Caribbean then fail out, and be several thousand dollars in debt. Should I worry about this? Should I encourage or discourage her about going to med school? 😕
 
The caribbean schools aren't any easier than the US schools and sometimes they are harder to make up for the fact that they are Caribb schools and not US.

Has she taken English classes? My dad's English wasn't the best when we moved here but he worked UBBER hard on improving it. He took lots of advanced classes and classes for foreigners. He has perfect understanding of English now and only has problems communicating when we're fighting and I get on him for his syntax when he's mad.
 
bigblue said:
My worst nightmare is that she'll be accepted in the Caribbean then fail out, and be several thousand dollars in debt. Should I worry about this? Should I encourage or discourage her about going to med school? 😕

Unfortunately for her, these are very valid concerns. Even if she does get through the courses and the first two license exams, she may have a tough time getting through the Step 2-CS portion of the licensure exam, in which communication skills weigh heavily.

Any chance she can take an immersion course, such as Berlitz, in an attempt to improve her English?

-Skip
 
Oopss... I didn't pay attention to the original post's date. hahahah it was 7 years old! What a waste of my time.. Oh well... I guess I'll leave my advice here anyway since I already typed it up.

Hi Everyone,

I'm hoping for a little advice here. My girlfriend wants to go to medical school and I wonder what you think her chances are. She has a BA in music (or piano performance) from a university in China, where she's originally from, and a MA in piano performance from a university in the US. She hasn't taken the MCAT, but has taken the Kaplan review course (2 or 3 times) and scores about 7-7-8 on their practice MCATs. I don't know her undergrad GPA, but while getting her master's she held near 4.0. She's also taken all the prereq's and overall science is about 3.5.

The biggest deal that I see is her communications skills. English is her second language and it's pretty difficult to express herself clearly outside of a set of comfortable phrases that she's picked up over the years. I mean, I can understand her pretty well, but many other people have a hard time following her. Also, she tends to misunderstand things people say to her, and her writing is very bad.

Because of this, she thinks that her best shot for medical school is the Caribbean. Does anyone think this is reasonable? I'm currently in my second year of MS, and can't imagine her getting through classes as rough as anatomy or pharm, especially with her language skills. Also, on a practical level, it may be difficult for her to communicate well with patients. She's been in the US for 10 years now, and I don't think her language is going to get a lot better. My worst nightmare is that she'll be accepted in the Caribbean then fail out, and be several thousand dollars in debt. Should I worry about this? Should I encourage or discourage her about going to med school? 😕
Be honest with her and voice your concern. I believe your concern is very valid. She needs to address her communication problems first before thinking about carib school. Carib schools are very tough, they chew you up and spit you out if you can't keep up. And it won't be several thousand dollars in debt, it will be more like tens of thousand...

Btw, I'm also an immigrant and been in the US for 13 years. I didn't have a serious problem with english but I did have the usual struggles. My experience w/ improving english was:

- Read newspapers and magazines everyday (economist, times... NOT Allure or whatever...), and read it OUT LOUD. Do it slow at first, then speed up the reading pace eventually. Don't just read it out loud but read and listen to her own voice. Pay attention to fluidity and tone. Make sure it carries emotion and not just monotonic. If you have time, listen to her, and correct her when necessary. Heck, to spice things up, you and her can find play manuscript or shakespeare dialogs (or something easier) and read them out loud. It'll be fun. 🙂
- Start keeping a journal or diary in english. Write down things happened during the day and her feelings. It doesn't have to be grammatically correct. The purpose is to keep her thoughts flowing in english.
- I think the most important thing for me was talking to myself in english whenever I could. Of course I didn't do it public cuz ppl would think i was crazy... 🙂 But say when I was driving, or cooking, or cleaning the house, or even doing homework, etc... I would say out loud my thought process, the things I'm doing or planning to do. Much like a doctor telling his patients the steps he's doing in a physical exam. This exercise helped me think in english and not just translating from a foreign language to english in my head. It will be difficult at first, but it will pay off.
- Sing 🙂 I would pick out some relatively slow and good songs that I liked, memorized the lyrics, and sang to it when it was playing (of course try to mimic as close to the singer's voice as possible). Believe it or not, singing helped me correct my pronunciation a lot.

good luck!
 
Last edited:
Just wondering if you know this thread is from 2004?
 
Just wondering if you know this thread is from 2004?

:laugh: I wasn't paying attention when I typed up my reply. Then AFTER that, I realized it was an old thread. But I decided to leave my reply here anyway... after all, i already typed it up.

I blame it on the person who posted before me and conjured it up. :laugh:
 
It's ok 😉 Just sayin... We all look... I have just seen many people get 'burned' for that on some of the other forums... these aren't frequented, so no biggie 😉
 
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