Premed at Cambridge

GeraldM
Tue, 19 Apr 2011 14:57:08 +0000

Well, a lot of things changed since the 80’s (Although have to add, that the engineering degree at Cambridge takes 4 years, for some reason.) Most importantly, the Bologna process uniformized the higher education in the EU, which led to a few catastrophes, still, it seems that the system is working. The basic idea was behind this transformation to make it easier for students to pursue degrees abroad - and, although it follows the British way, so the BA takes 3 years, it is obviously easier for those wish to pursue grad studies in the US, for obvious reason: they have a BA in hand, not a, say, laurea, and the US universities know well the process and the degree equivalence.

I know the latter from experience, as I did my undergrad studies in Germany before the introduction of the Bologna process, therefore I got a MA as a first degree, which is a kind of weird thing from an US perspective, but the administrators at those universities I targeted to pursue an MA (namely Princeton, Yale and Columbia), knew everything about the Bolgna process, and the former systems as well. On purely speculative grounds, one might think that there are universities in the US that do not accept students with an European BA to pursue grad studies, but, again, I know at least 35 people (just counted :D) who went straight from the EU to the US to pursue grad studies, and neither of them faced with any problems because their BA took “just” 3 years; have to add, however, that there were no people in this group who wanted to go to law or med school. (For obvious reasons, I’m not counting that 9 or 10 people who went to Ivy league (+Stanford, MIT and Chicago) schools with an Oxbridge BA in hand. An Oxbridge BA is an Oxbridge BA, after all, and as such, it is highly regarded.) The two people I know, who got into Harvard from Cambridge, were indeed faced with problems, but that’s not about 3v4 years, but because the whole system is different.

And one cannot rule out the possibility that people with Harvard BA-s would face plenty of problems if they want to enter med school in the UK. But the same goes to med schools within the EU, as law and medicine are the two things not yet affected by the Bologna process, and therefore nearly every EU country have a system different from it’s neighbor’s.