There are a couple of privately run med schools in Egypt that offer a graduate entry option for students with a baccalaureate degree–though these unis will accept a bachelors in any field, even English or law.
But most Egyptian medical schools are 6 year direct entry programs.
In Egypt you have to go into the 6 year program to be a doctor, you can’t get an undergraduate degree in the states then go to med school there. I don’t want to go to Egypt, it isn’t a very financially wise option since there isn’t any aid or scholarships so I’ll be in debt either way. Also I don’t have some of their requirements prepared & I don’t have any family in Egypt & it’s honestly not in my list of considerations. My current plan is I go to US for undergrad studies & then either go to a US medical school or a European one (maybe even an accelerated program). Please tell me if this is unrealistic for my portfolio, but Egypt just isn’t a very suitable option in my head, but please feel free to correct me
Could you please list any that you find?
There are number of private medical school in eastern and southern Europe that do accept international students for graduate entry in medicine. Many of these programs offer instruction in English. But they are all private universities and do not give financial aid to international students. Can your family afford to pay the tuition and living expenses to attend?
To use one example-- Jagiellonian University Medical College in Poland costs €4500/year plus fees, living expenses, books, language school. (You need to speak Polish in order to do clinical rotations. This is likely true in other countries–you’ll need some degree of fluency in the local language in order to understand patients during your clinical training. You’ll also some fluency in order to be able to manage living in the country for 4-5 years.)
I can give you a website that lists graduate entry, instruction in English medical schools, but I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the website since it’s run by a commercial entity that makes it money off assisting students apply to these programs. I would consider information from it untrustworthy unless you can verify it yourself.
Edited to add: the issue with any of these private medical schools is that you are left completely on your own to find a medical internship in the country in which you plan to practice medicine. And you are also on your own after internship to find a residency (specialty training) if you want to do anything other than do general practice medicine.
You will not be able to to practice medicine in the US without first applying for and completing a medical residency program in the US. The process to get a US residency is complex and requires taking and passing all the same exams that US medical students take. Your odds of getting a US residency are better if you can get some US clinical experience during your medical education since you will need at least one letter of recommendation from a US physician who you have worked for in a clinical setting.
Because medical education standards and curricula vary so much by country. it’s best to attend a medical school in the country in which you plan to settle and practice medicine.
The ECFMG certifies medical education as meeting basic standards and handles the registration and verification process for international medical students wanting to come train in the US (and Australia! My daughter had to work with the ECFMG to get her US medical education recognized in Australia)
Thank you so much, I’ll definitely look into it, but I am only a highschooler, like all of this is in 7 years & is very overwhelming right now. I wanted to ask if there was any pathway I could follow or something specific that can boost my portfolio & ECs for a high rank need blind school? Like I need to work on this next year
Like with the info from the original post + this, is there anything I could possibly do?
Study hard for SATs.
Your ECs are impressive, but none of them seem to involve science, mathematics or medicine. They look more like business, finance or marketing to me.
Yesss I’m studying for the SATs, & I do have a lack of STEM & I’m looking to do more. I’m interning at Georgetown for public health & medicine (I’ll do suturing practice, cpr certification, treating a real patient myself from a developing country, etc.) all on full scholarship. & the Formula 1 in schools program was a pretty rigorous 5 month program (over 300 hours) where we didn’t only do the stuff I listed but also learnt the basics of mechanical & aerodynamic engineering, (that a first year engineering major would learn) we had to render cars & other pieces using industry grade interfaces/software, operated CNC machines, 3d printers, aerodynamic testing machines & software. Would any of this help?
1° you should not apply to US colleges checking “premed”. Indeed, that will count against you as an international since internationals cannot attend a US med or do school.
2° at a typical US med school, half the students come with majors biology, chemistry, biochemistry, physics, biophysics, neuroscience… and the other half comes from Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences… the Biology major has a low ROI because there are so many of them and so many of them fail to get into med school. However it is NOT required in major in biology or a science to get into med school. You only need about 10-12 classes (with As) which you can take as your electives and gen eds.
3° your path is likely a US college → one of the Post Graduate entry programs in Europe, such as Royal Surgeons of Ireland.
4° for a Plan B, I would recommend you plan on a major such as Public health, which would align with your strengths, addind the premed pre-reqs and Bioinformatics or Biostatistics or Data science courses or minor. (Public Health with lots of Data science courses or a double major would be optimal as a plan B but I don’t know how easy it’d be logistically to combine with the premed pre-reqs. )
At this point, the best thing you can do to strengthen your application would be a stellar SAT or ACT score.
Keep in mind that for international admits to top US colleges with fin aid, you have to be one of the top students in your country. It sounds as if you’re studying in Saudi while your parents work there? That is a bit more difficult to chance, since there are so many guest worker children studying there in multiple types of schools that are not the same as the schools for Saudi citizen children, and not the same as each other, so it’s difficult to show you’re one of the top students in your country (where you are also a guest worker’s child, not a citizen, but in Saudi that’s common). But a top SAT score, even if you can get it, doesn’t help as much as you might think, since there are plenty of US applicants with very high SAT scores who don’t get accepted to those universities that offer fin aid to internationals.
You’ve assembled a good EC record. You are a straight A student. Definitely study very hard for the SAT and get as high a score as you can. Beyond winning a major international competition, there’s not much more you can do, in your case.
You need a coherent back story for your essay, that would usually include, “I want to come learn what you have to teach me, and maybe go on for grad Ed in the US, but my ultimate goal is to return to my country and help my country utilizing my education in the US that you, US colleges, were so kind to gift to me.” But for medicine that doesn’t work, since in fact, there is medical ed available in most countries, it’s not really available for internationals in the US, and there is already a serious brain drain of foreign trained doctors who come to the US to practice (and earn far, far more money than they ever could have dreamed of earning at home). The US medical education system has no intention of training foreigners to become doctors in the US, especially if they need fin aid, and the colleges know that.
The public health angle could work, but the reality is that you have nothing from Egypt except citizenship and a passport. You have no connection there, you have no family there, no ties there, so it would be a stretch to make a compelling argument that you want to study public health (not medicine) in the US and then go back to Egypt to help your country, because, as you say, you really have no ties there. BTW, public health in the US is usually a masters level program, not undergrad, so the schools that offer aid to internationals might not be a match for public health.
Medical school in Egypt is a 7 yr program, and costs about 40K USD for the entire program (vs as much as 500K for private undergrad and med school tuition in the US), plus of course living expenses, which in the US would be about another 250K for 8 yrs, and much less in Egypt. The cost of the 7 yr program in Egypt should be manageable for a family earning 120K USD/yr in Saudi. You really should consider applying for this, as it is your most likely route to becoming an MD. Is there any way that you could complete the requirements, and sit the entrance exam? Maybe even plan to go do a last couple of years of high school there in order to fulfill their entrance requirements, and sit their entrance exams? Of course, it is extremely competitive to get into their 7 yr programs, and I suspect that acceptance is not always based upon merit, but upon connections and even bribes, but surely some Egyptians are able to get in based upon merit?
I think that with your public health summer program that you did, you could make a coherent back story for wanting to help your country (Egypt) by getting an undergrad degree in a helping field, with the avowed intention of getting a master’s in public health, and then returning to Egypt to work in public health, where it is very much needed. But the problem with manufactured back stories is that they don’t often ring true. Meanwhile, your true ultimate goal, which is to practice medicine in the US, is not likely to get you into a US college, even with your excellent record, even if you were able to get a perfect SAT score. Even if you are open about your intention to get an MD by attending a European med school (at full pay, of course), it puts the lie to your needing full fin aid for undergrad in the US, and just isn’t going to help you get into a US school. You see, so many US applicants say that they want to become doctors - the undergrad colleges just don’t want any more of those.
Thank you SO much I’ll absolutely look into it. I could not find ANY scholarships for internationals, thank you thank you thank you!!!
Colleges with merit scholarships may or may not restrict them to US citizens&residents.
UAlabama has a near full ride for students with a (weighted -* ) GPA and a perfect SAT or ACT score.
An international student posted here that he got a full ride from USouthern Mississippi.
Washington&Lee (if you don’t mind the name association) offers full rides too.
If you can afford 35-40k, lots more places open up: Knox College, Trinity TX, Miami-Ohio, Muhlenberg, Luther IA, App State, UMN Morris, Suny Albany, Truman State, St Kate’s, Augsburg, and Hamline in the Twin Cities as well as state universities. Dickinson, Denison, Bates become reachable reaches.
(* it means that grades in harder courses get extra points. For instance, an A in an AP/IB/Alevel class would be worth 5, a B 4 -whereas an easy class would be respectively 4 and 3.)
As a high school student?? You won’t be treating patients by yourself.
No haha! The idea is that using augmented reality or VR tech I’ll be connected to a real life patient & doctor in a developing country & with the supervision of a bunch of doctors & after many lectures & training & stuff I’ll basically speak to the patient, explain the sickness they have (for example malaria) & give them ways to treat it & avoid it in the future with the doctor there translating what I’m saying. So it’s sort of like a real life simulation!! I’m very excited
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