Premed at Cambridge

GeraldM
Tue, 19 Apr 2011 13:33:07 +0000

I don’t know much about “The American colleges” the vast majority of my information and experience is relate to the elite and, have to say, you do not even need a Cambridge or Oxford degree to enter a top notch grad school with a 3 years European BA. Again, thousands of EU students do this every year, without facing any problems. Can’t see the point why are you stressing this. But I know people who entered to solid state flagships MA or PhD programmes (Colorado at Boulder, Indiana at Bloomington, UF and Penn State) having a 3 year BA in hand from solid German universities. (Well, those uni’s considered strong at Germany, but while Cambridge and Oxford are in the world top 10 at every ranking, even the strongest German institutions are struggling to enter the World top 50 or 100…). I’m sure you’re right, and there are indeed universities in the US that do not accept students with a 3 year BA other than Oxbridge into their graduate programs, but I don’t think there are many. Again, bear in mind that the whole EU university system, after it’s uniformization through the Bologna pact, based on 3 year BA, followed by a 2 year MA (although the MPhil at Cambridge and Oxford usually takes 1 year to complete, which means that it is quite intensive). What a capital mistake would it be to neglect the whole EU student population who want to pursue grad studies in the US, after receiving their undergrad degrees?

As a matter of fact I know people (well, just two, therefore I would not base whole statistics on them :D) who went to medical school in the US (Harvard) after being undergrad at Cambridge, but that’s true, it’s always hard change, and as far as I know they also faced with some problems, simply because there are considerable differences between the UK and the US systems. The same goes to law, as mentioned. It is safe to say that it is wiser to pursue undergrad studies in the US if someone wants to practice there. I’m not arguing against this, it’s absolutely true.