Applying to foreign universities

Best universities for medicine? I'm likely to apply for Oxford/Cambridge, Imperial College and UCL. But outside of the UK, where are the best universities for medicine? I'm considering applying to Harvard and/or Stanford in the States but willing to hear about other places.

Reply 1

TSR Hippocrates

10

Hey there, thanks for posting a question in the Medicine forum. :biggrin:

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Reply 2

longfurby

3

Original post by sk_5557

Best universities for medicine? I'm likely to apply for Oxford/Cambridge, Imperial College and UCL. But outside of the UK, where are the best universities for medicine? I'm considering applying to Harvard and/or Stanford in the States but willing to hear about other places.

I'm from the US, but just want to make sure you're applying as an undergrad right? Because medical school in the US is significantly different, you must have a Bachelor's first, then apply to medical school. Remember that Harvard and Stanford will be likely even more competitive than Oxbridge for med school, and siginificantly more expensive, and aid for international students may be harder to find.

Reply 3

sk_5557

OP

10

Original post by longfurby

I'm from the US, but just want to make sure you're applying as an undergrad right? Because medical school in the US is significantly different, you must have a Bachelor's first, then apply to medical school. Remember that Harvard and Stanford will be likely even more competitive than Oxbridge for med school, and siginificantly more expensive, and aid for international students may be harder to find.

Yes, as an undergrad. Thanks.

Reply 4

longfurby

3

Original post by sk_5557

Yes, as an undergrad. Thanks.

Yeah the system is completely different, and assuming you want to practice in the UK, I don’t really see a benefit to studying in the US, but I might be unaware of something because I’m not intending to study medicine. US med school is very competitive, and residency and so forth last longer, also in the ik u have UCAT and BMAT, in the us I believe you have to take the MCAT, but I’m not actually sure if that’s required.

Reply 5

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

21

Original post by sk_5557

Best universities for medicine? I'm likely to apply for Oxford/Cambridge, Imperial College and UCL. But outside of the UK, where are the best universities for medicine? I'm considering applying to Harvard and/or Stanford in the States but willing to hear about other places.

Hi, I've moved your thread to the international study forum, the medicine forum is for queries about applying to medicine in the UK.

In the US medicine is a postgraduate degree only. You need to do an undergraduate degree first. You cannot apply to an MD as a school leaver. There are some integrated programmes e.g. Brown's "Programme in Liberal Medical Education" where you enroll as an undergraduate and provided you meet basically all the same requirements you'd need to meet to get into the MD programme there anyway, proceed directly to the MD after 3 years rather than after the full 4 year undergraduate degree (US bachelors degrees are 4 years long) and then they retroactively apply your first year MD credits to completing the bachelors degree - so the full time is 7 years, rather than 8 years (assuming no gaps in education etc). However since you basically have to meet all the requirements and have a more competitive route to getting into the undergrad degree there, it's a bit pointless.

Also, both undergraduate study and medical degrees in the US are extraodinarily expensive for international students. Unless you go to an undergraduate college which is committed to meeting all demonstrated financial need (and probably ideally a need blind school so that they can't just see you're going to cost them a ton of money and say "nah"), it's going to cost you probably about $300,000-400,000 for the undergraduate degree and that again for the medical degree. Also as a non-US citizen your chances of getting into any competitive residency programme (i.e. anything that isn't psych/family med/internal med maybe in more rural areas) is basically zero due to how the working visa sponsorship laws work in the US which means they are required to prioritise American applicants to jobs (including residency).

I'd note also ultimately medicine is somewhat jurisdictional as while the physiology is universal, the specific processes and ways in which healthcare is implemented is not. So you should generally aim to study medicine wherever you are aiming to practice medicine.

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Applying to foreign universities

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