What Should I Do for my "Year Off" when waiting for H1b?

[Blitz2006]

Hey guys,

3rd year med student in the UK (Birmingham). I'm looking into doing my residency in the States. My concern is H1b visa (since I'm British-Canadian citizen only). I have to burn a year, cause I can only write Step 3 once I graduate (June, 2012).

So therefore, I have to waste a year before starting Residency in July, 2013.

My original plan was to do F1. But I'm realizing that F1 is from August to August, and I've e-mailed some American residency programs, and they say they are strict with July 1st starting date. So looks like F1 is out.

So how do ppl (Canadians like me) from Ireland/UK match into States on H1b?

Any suggestions on what should I do? Does anyone know if I can just 'leave' my F1 post 1 month early? I highly doubt that.

Do I just take a year off and 'chill' (ie. travel)?

TIA,

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[leorl]

It depends. It's nice to come into US residency with some money, if you were able to swing the F1 year. Yes, you'd have to leave a month early but you could talk to administration and see if you could schedule your vacation days to stack it for then. It's not really advisable to be sneaky with sick / vacation days, but everyone does what they have to... Keep in mind that should you be accepted for interviews, you'll have to take time off to study for those too. If you can financially afford it, it might be better to look for a clinical research job (those usually aren't funded well, if at all). Whatever you do with that year, make sure there's medicine in there somewhere (medical mission if you want to travel) so it doesn't look like you just took a year off.

 

[bambi]

If I go to the US I am planning to do it after F2 and was hoping to save up holiday time and take it all at the end so I could start in the US in July. I heard though that you can't take that much holiday at once usually but if you tell them in advance maybe you could. Or, if you never plan on coming back, and don't need full registration you could always hand in your notice and just leave a month early. Foundation jobs are all 2 years now, unlike before where you sometimes had to reapply for F2 so even if you did all of F1 you would end up having to quit a job.