Premed at Cambridge

texaspg
Tue, 19 Apr 2011 14:25:31 +0000

I am an engineer with a 4 year degree that came to US in late 80s to a graduate school. I had a German batchmate with a 3 year degree who came as a visiting scholar, no less knowledgeable from anyone else in the department but he had to jump through major hoops when they tried to convert him into a graduate student. He had to go take some 101 undergraduate classes during his first year there to make up for his lack of credits in some areas to get him upto par with a 4 year degree (totally useless but it was forced). At the end of the first year, he was finally certified as having completed his undergrad equivalent and then was converted into a master’s student in the dept. He completed the masters after the second year, which was normal for our dept., i.e., do a masters with thesis in two years.

This guy had the deparment head fighting for him through the entire bureaucratic process because he wanted to hold him back for an extra year (the head wanted him to even do a Ph.D. but the guy wanted to go back home).

The whole point of it is that anything is possible, but assuming it is a smooth process making it through these multiple systems is foolhardy. I am advising the OP to do research. I think if you can the OP in touch with your friends who ended up going to harvard med, it might help.