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Pursuing Medicine in the US

Hello, I am a year 12 student, studying A-level Chemistry, Biology, and Physics. I have started this discussion because I need some help. In the future (preferably after university) I would like to emigrate to the states to become a neurosurgery resident.

I have looked online for steps or for information on how to do this, but many of the articles that I have read don't explain things well or are really confusing. I was wondering if anyone here could maybe give me some advice?
Alright, I understand where you are a coming from. But then there is this question, how does one even apply to study in the states as a pre-med? I have also researched this online but had my brain fried because the way people write those articles is laughable.
Original post by potentialsurgeon
Alright, I understand where you are a coming from. But then there is this question, how does one even apply to study in the states as a pre-med? I have also researched this online but had my brain fried because the way people write those articles is laughable.


You have to do an undergraduate degree before you apply to medicine, in exactly the same way that you can't apply to a PhD programme as a school leaver here. To begin with, for terminology, college refers to university level study in the US in general, however university usually refers to a specific type of college, namely a research based institution that offers 4 year bachelors programmes, as compared to liberal arts colleges which are not research based and community colleges which normally offer 2 year associates degree programmes.

Applications to US colleges are normally made directly to the college in question, although increasingly many now use the CommonApp, a format somewhat like UCAS. However, there is no restriction on how many colleges you wish to apply to in theory - however, you need to pay an application fee for each college you apply to, set by and paid to the colleges (via the CommonApp for those that use it). As such in practice it's usually prohibitively expensive to apply to more than about 5 anyway (application fees are usually around $50-100 per college).

Unlike in the UK, you don't apply to a specific degree programme; you are just apply to the college "at large", so to speak. You will then declare your major usually in your second year, which is essentially then what your degree is in. There are some exceptions, usually for prospective engineering majors and sometimes for people who want to major in the business school - these sometimes require you to specify what you want to major in initially (and you may be admitted to the college but not the major, although usually you can attempt to apply to the major again after you start), and sometimes have prerequisites like UK degrees.

US degree structure/format and pre-med requirements:

Spoiler



Finance and how US colleges look at applications:

Spoiler


About right to work in the US:

Spoiler

(edited 4 years ago)
Thank you!

I edited in some spoilers to make the whole post a little less of a terrifying wall of text, and also break it up into semi-discrete topics, if that helps (the bit you quoted is still the last one) xD
(edited 4 years ago)

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