The Student Room Group

Can someone explain how the american higher education system works please?

live in England, and due to my lack of specific A Level's, I can't study medicine here. I am therefore going to do an undergraduate degree in Maths. I heard somewhere that in the USA,you can only do a degree in Law or Medicine if you have an undergraduate degree or a lot experience in that field (e.g. Law degree if you have been a prison officer for something like 30 years). I am thinking of doing my undergrad. in England and then doing a postgrad. in either Maths or Medicine in America. Will I be bale to do this if I only have Maths, French, Geography and English Lit. as A levels (I was going to do Law at uni, but then I changed my mind).

Please can someone explain this system to me. Thank You
Reply 1
I heard somewhere that in the USA,you can only do a degree in Law or Medicine if you have an undergraduate degree or a lot experience in that field (e.g. Law degree if you have been a prison officer for something like 30 years)


Relax - I don't know where you heard that but it's totally false, you can do law OR medicine at grad level in the US as long as you have a very good degree result and good LSAT/MCAT scores. It helps in medicine to have done science of some sort simply because the MCAT exams (like SATs for medicine) are quite difficult if you don't have a solid foundation in bio/chem but I know people who did history etc. undergrad and went to medical school - they were very bright, top students and were able to learn the bio/chem needed for the MCAT on their own. Your A- levels will be totally irrelevant, high school qualifications don't count. The bottom line is you have to go to a good, well-regarded university, do very well in whatever subject you choose and then do very well on the MCAT exam to get into an American medical school.
Reply 2
You could also just try to get on a Medicine with foundation year course over here, rather than subject yourself to the extra expense and hassle of doing medicine as a graduate in the U.S.
Reply 3
Yes, you can only do a law degree if you've been a prison officer for 30 years, that's definitely it.
Reply 4
For medical school in the US you will need a good BA degree in Biology and Chemistry (or Biochemistry), since these build the foundational knowledge you will need to work from in Med school - as well as prepare you for the MCAT test. For Law school applications what BA degree you earn really doesn't matter as long as you have excellent analytical and comparative reasoning skills (which will be demonstrated in your LSAT scores), and you will need to explain why law school is right for you. In both cases you will still need a very high GPA in order to get in, especially for Med schools and top tier law schools.
Reply 5
claret_n_blue
live in England, and due to my lack of specific A Level's, I can't study medicine here. I am therefore going to do an undergraduate degree in Maths. I heard somewhere that in the USA,you can only do a degree in Law or Medicine if you have an undergraduate degree or a lot experience in that field (e.g. Law degree if you have been a prison officer for something like 30 years). I am thinking of doing my undergrad. in England and then doing a postgrad. in either Maths or Medicine in America. Will I be bale to do this if I only have Maths, French, Geography and English Lit. as A levels (I was going to do Law at uni, but then I changed my mind).

Please can someone explain this system to me. Thank You


You can study Medicine as a graduate student without Science A-levels or indeed a Science based BSc :smile: Or just do the foundation year first.