Future International Student Starting At Community College For A.A. Can Transfer To Ivy Schools?

So I’m mexican, I finished high school and earned a Laboratory technician title, I was one of the best students in my class but my first semester grades were low (6) so I ended up with a grade of 8.9 but couldn’t get it up to a 9. Im in my third semester of college right now studying to be a Nutritionist at the second best college here(IPN) but I don’t like it, i want to study medicine and I really want to study in the US so I applied for a community college (Valencia College) without submitting any college transcripts as it seemed easier and have a lot of questions longterm speaking

If I get accepted in the community college, is there any way they can deny the student visa again?
If everything goes ok and I earn an associates in arts degree, can I transfer to a different school for a bachelor’s?
I chose Health sciences, was it a good choice to continue and get into a good Medical school?
Is it possible to get into an Ivy league school coming from a community college AND being an international student?

And if you know anything that could be useful, have any suggestions or any information it would be really helpful.

Did you disclose all of your prior college enrollment on your application? If you did not disclose your enrollment, you probably lied. Bad idea.

Yes, your visa can be denied for a myriad of reasons. The main reasons would be suspected intent to immigrate, prior US visa violations, or insufficient funding.

Generally speaking, yes. That said, no institution would be required to accept you as a transfer applicant if there’s a problem with your application (e.g. if you were kicked out of community college for lying on your application, or you don’t have sufficient funding to pay for the Bachelor’s degree, or your community college GPA is too low, etc).

Possible? Yes. Likely, no. Most highly selective private universities only accept a handful of transfer students each year.

If you do get accepted, you will be playing catch up to your classmates who had waaaay more opportunities than you did in the first two years of college, and probably going years back further. It’s miserable. The two community college transfer students I knew at Stanford - both academic superstars in community college - were struggling just to graduate. They both broke down and ended up involuntarily committed to a psych ward part-way through. You are more likely to be successful if you transfer to a slightly less competitive university with a smaller gap between the incoming transfer students and the rest of the student body. Or to a public university with a larger population of community college transfer students.

As an aside, “health science” is not a good major for your associate’s degree if you want to transfer to a highly selective university. Choose an academic major instead.

The most popular pre-med major in the US is biology, followed by chemistry. Any major will do, as long as you complete all required pre-med coursework. (The most common requirements are 2-3 years of chemistry, 1-2 years of biology, 1 year of physics, math up through calculus and statistics, 2 courses in English composition, and possibly a psychology course. You’ll want to take the most rigorous versions of the science courses, not the simplified versions for nursing students or other ‘health science’ majors. The course catalog at your community college should point out which version of chemistry, biology and physics is recommended for pre-med students.)

CAUTION: most US medical schools will only consider applications from international students if you can prove that you have funding for the full medical degree. That may mean depositing the full cost of attendance for all 4 years into an escrow account before you are allowed to set foot on campus - right now that’s about $300,000.

If your goal is to become a physician in the US, there’s a much cheaper route: complete medical school in your home country, get your foreign medical degree certified as equivalent to the US medical degree by the [Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates](https://www.ecfmg.org/certification/requirements-for-certification.html), take the [US Medical Licensing Exam](http://www.usmle.org), and then participate in the [Match[/url] to be placed into a US residency.

The ECFMG can sponsor your J-1 visa for the duration of your residency program. After residency, foreign physicians can self-petition for a green card via [url=https://www.uscis.gov/greencard/physician-NIW]National Interest Waiver](Intro to The Match | NRMP) if they make a commitment to work in a medically underserved setting for 5 years.

Good luck!

One small correction:

The ECFMG cannot sponsor visas for international medical graduates; only the residency program itself can sponsor a visa. This puts IMGs at a disadvantage during the residency application process since many programs will not do so.

See: https://www.ecfmg.org/evsp/j1fact.pdf


BTW, @shelx4, if you do persist and apply to US medical  schools, you are required to disclose your entire college career, including coursework taken in your home country. Those grades, plus any grades earned at any US college must be reported, You are required to provide transcripts from every educational institution you have attended since high school graduation, even if you did not earn any credits at all of those schools. Failure to do so has very severe consequences.

<a href="https://aamc-orange.global.ssl.fastly.net/production/media/filer_public/33/f0/33f0bd3f-9721-43cb-82a2-99332bbda78e/2018_amcas_applicant_guide_web-tags.pdf">https://aamc-orange.global.ssl.fastly.net/production/media/filer_public/33/f0/33f0bd3f-9721-43cb-82a2-99332bbda78e/2018_amcas_applicant_guide_web-tags.pdf</a>

OK, technical the ECFMG does sponsors the J-1 visa for international medical grads, but it only does so in conjunction with the receiving residency program. The majority of US residency programs will not consider J-1 or H1B visa holders for residency positions.

We have quite a lot of data on who does or does not get matched to a residency position. For example, in 2016, foreign international medical graduates (IMGs) had a match rate of 51%, compared to rates of 89% for seniors+graduates of US medical schools and 54% for US IMGs. [Main Match Results and Data 2016](http://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Main-Match-Results-and-Data-2016.pdf)

51% is a coin toss. It’s not ideal, but for most students that 51% shot is preferable over spending half a million dollars on a US college and medical education - money that most aspiring foreign doctors simply don’t have.

There’s another more detailed publication that drills into how IMGs that successfully matched into their preferred specialty differ from other IMGs, broken down by citizenship status and preferred specialty: [Charting Outcomes for International Medical Graduates 2016](http://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Charting-Outcomes-IMGs-2016.pdf)

There is a breakdown by country of citizenship and country of medical education in the 2014 edition: [Charting the Outcomes for International Medical Graduates 2014](https://www.ecfmg.org/resources/NRMP-ECFMG-Charting-Outcomes-in-the-Match-International-Medical-Graduates-2014.pdf)

Mexico data on pp. 21-22, p. 87.