Scholarships in the US [for International Student]

Applying to College
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Hello guys, how are you?

I’m 21y from Brazil and i would like to ask a very specific question here.

I got a job opportunity to work in the US to get a green card in 3 years.

My actual goal is to become a doctor but i know that in the US it would really bring us to many different kinds of difficulties.

I’m from a poor family so i would have to depend 100% on scholarships or federal/state financial aids/loans to be able to get my education in US.

I would like how likely is to be able to definetly get that kind of scholarship or financial aid to study for the BS in Biology or Chemistry.

I know that applying for the medschool after that too is a challenge, so i got a little bit discouraged.

Do you guys think that i would be being imprudent if i moved there with the expectations of surely being able of get a full ride scholarship for the BS programs?

I would have probably the three years of work to prepare for the SAT/ACT.

I too would like to know if i should be worried about the current political sceneriee, with questions like about the future of the FAFSA and that kind of thing.

I’m gratefull for any answer. Thank you very much.

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Please put medical school and thoughts of medical school on the back burner. At this point, you aren’t in the U.S., and you don’t have a green card.

Once you get that green card, you will need to do four years of undergraduate college FIRST…and you will need some way to pay the costs to attend college plus your living expenses. That could be a large sum of money.

If you do then get that green card, and you do complete your bachelors degree here, you will have to apply to medical school. About 40% of applicants get only ONE acceptance…so…getting accepted to medical school is not a guarantee….and it’s four years long at $100,000 a year or so…if you do get accepted.

If you want to become a doctor, is there some reason why you wouldn’t do so in Brazil where you already are a citizen.

I don’t know what sort of job would guarantee you a green card in three years…perhaps you can explain that.

Anyway…I think you are getting ahead of yourself. You need to have a plan to get a bachelors degree here…first!

ETA….once you have a green card and can do the FAFSA, that is a financial aid application form. It is used to determine your eligibility for the Pell Grant (about $7200 a year) and you can take a Direct Loan ($5500 for freshman college year). That amount in total won’t fund your college costs.

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@Solaris_73, I would be cautious of any job opportunity promising a green card within three years. What kind of job is this (if you don’t mind sharing)? We want to help you avoid getting scammed.

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Who is advising you? Only citizens/green card holders can fill out the FAFSA. It is an application. It does not apply to a non-citizen. It does not give you money.
FAFSA or Federal financial aid would require citizenship or green card holder status. Even then, the monies are extremely limited. $7200 (Us) per year would barely cover 1/10 of the annual cost to attend a university in the states.
State financial aid requires you to be a tax-paying resident of a state with sufficient employment to cover your own expenses annually.

Medical school requires you to pay about $100,000 per year to cover the costs for 4+ years. Citizenship is almost mandatory with few exceptions. How will you pay that? There are very few scholarships for medical school. Most medical students have their families pay the bill, or, as citizens, they take loans that take them 20-30 years to pay.

When a student goes to medical school, they have very limited hours to sleep, eat and study. They can’t take jobs because there is no time for it.
So, again I ask, who is going to pay that bill?
The SAT and ACT were designed to be taken while in high school, as teenage students, not as adults. Taking it at 24, doesn’t make sense.

What kind of a legal job guarantees a green card for you in 3 years?
I know of no job that can guarantee such a thing. I know of families waiting for 10-15 years to get to green card status. No one knows how long the waits are but there has been a backlog for years.

Please consider completing your education in Brazil and being safe.

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I’m gratefull for the information. I’m checking the possibilities and in fact the unique solution would be if i could get accepted in any free college or get a full ride scholarship.
One person told me that the colleges are giving need-based scholarship without many merit requirements but it’s a challenge to get a good profile to be able to get in.
Do you have any information to share about how do these scholarships things works around there?
My preference always would be the US, i don’t want to sounds crazy or something on even consider to take all of those risks but you know how profitable a medical career in US could be for someone.
I got a job opportunity to work in hospitability. The EB3 visa could grant the green card so that wouldn’t be a problem.

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I heared that some colleges would be giving need-based scholarships for their students.
Do you think that’s not possible to get in any of these colleges to get one benefit like this?
Besides that, couldn’t i study for cheap or free in a BS community college?
If i become a LPR i think that i would be eligible for FAFSA to the medschool, and i think that if we consider 4 years of BS and one more gap year course i already would be eligible for the citizenship.

The job is in hospitality field in oregon, there are many brazilians that already got their green card in that time frame. Even tough i heared some people saying bad things about the EB3 procedures, that aren’t the same thing as before anymore and that kind of thing. I think it’s true, anyway, i stil didn’t check it deeply.

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I don’t want to be discouraging…but please understand…U.S. citizens with terrific grades aren’t guaranteed a free undergrad education here, and actually, a totally free ride is hard to come by.

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This isn’t what you asked, but do you already have a degree? Because while there are work opportunities that lead to green cards (some on arrival, most often in nursing), all the ones I am aware of require you to have at least a bachelors degree and work experience in order to get the job. At age 21, fulfilling both those seems unlikely. I’m worried someone is scamming you. Do you know what category green card they claim to be offering (it would be something like EB1, EB2, EB3)?
Edit: I see you said eb3. Please be careful. If you know actual people yourself who have worked for this employer and succeeded…go ahead and try. A lot of people made offers like this find themselves working for below market wages (illegal, but what can they do about it unless they want to go home).
Edit again:
Something is not quite adding up because if you come in on an
EB3 visa you get a green card on arrival. What kind of visa are they bringing you in on that you still have to adjust to eb3 in 3 years?

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You don’t seem to understand what we’re telling you. As an international student, you don’t qualify for a number of benefits that are given to American citizens and green card holders. Full Scholarships to attend a US university are very rare. US university students and their families can’t afford the universities. They have a very hard time paying for colleges and have lots of debt.

You can’t study for free or cheap in a community college because you need to be a local resident whose family has paid local taxes (I don’t know what a “BS community college” is).
If you were to arrive in the US, you wouldn’t automatically qualify for residency. As an international student, this means that you have to pay for attending any community colleges, and it won’t be free nor cheap.

Where will you live? Community colleges typically don’t have housing. How will you pay for your food and your transportation? You can’t get a job because you would need a work visa. On a student visa, you are only allowed to work very limited hours, but you won’t be able to pay rent or feed yourself and survive on that pay.

Ask yourself this question: if this was so easy to do, wouldn’t there be thousands of students from every country becoming doctors in the US??
There are no scholarships for international students to attend medical school that I ever have known of or heard of. Plus, most international students cannot get admittance to a medical school. They’re very limited to US students. The few international students, who are lucky enough to get a spot in a school, come from Canada, but that’s rare.

The cost to attend medical school is $100,000 a year. Please tell us where all this money is, in the US, that is sitting and waiting for an international student to use?

Who is providing you with such erroneous information? Just because you need money, and you believe that there’s free money in the US, please ask whoever is telling you this, to provide that information here. Which universities are giving you free money? Which medical schools are going to give you $100,000 a year to pay for medical school?

No, you would not.
When an international student is lucky enough to get into a US university, they come with the understanding that the university will educate them for 4 years. Then, once they graduate, they are expected to return to their home countries. Their visa EXPIRES!

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The OP is expecting to come here on an EB3 visa which would grant them a green card. A few of us have raised concerns about the legitimacy of this offer, but assuming it is as stated, then OP would be a permanent resident when applying to schools in the future, and would be eligible for citizenship 5 years later.

Of course, the cost concerns remain, and will be the biggest roadblock.

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Hoping the OP clarifies this a bit more…at least in their own head.

And yes, the cost of college in the United States will be an obstacle even if this student has a green card. Most students here do NOT get full free rides.

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The EB3 modal spans non skilled category as well. The 3 years time would happen because of the waiting time for the procedures in the Brazilian Embassy, i didn’t know that you get a green card in arrival. By what i readed, you would have to work for the employer for a little bit more time to get the GC through some forms and procedures. I’m not sure if the category is exactly EB3-3C or another branch inside of the EB3 category (because there are many ones). But is a fact that it worked for many people that i know.
Don’t worry i’ll be carefull. I just wanted to get the informations about the studies conditions. After that i can decide, guaranting that i don’t get scammed.

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EB3 is an immigrant visa. You cannot come and work in the US “on EB3” before you get the visa unless you are on another (work) visa. It doesn’t matter which subcategory of EB3 it is. All immigrant visas work the same way.
An immigrant visa means you become a LPR (green card holder) as soon as you enter the US on that visa. There is no wait time after that. But again, you cannot be in the US before that unless you are on another visa. The trickiness comes in that unless you are on an H2A - which is a seasonal, temporary work visa, seasonal meaning you cannot work for 3 uninterrupted years - there are no other work visas for unskilled employees.
If you are told anything else then it is not above board. Maybe you don’t fully understand the process this employer uses, but the story as you are presenting it here does not add up.

Regardless all that. The chances of you getting a full ride to medical school are basically zero, as they are for anyone. You can study for low cost at community college once you have established residence (which you would if you had a green card and had lived/worked somewhere before that)but you need a plan for after that. Hoping for free college in the most expensive country in the world to study …is not a plan, especially if you are not a top student. (And to be blunt, if you are a top student, this begs the question of why you haven’t studied at university in your home country already.)

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Hello guys, i would like to ask if can LPR graduated abroad get into medschool?

What do you guys think about that kind of application? Is that too hard to be accepted?

Anyway, would one need to have the EC’s, research, internships and everything from his graduation country?

Would one always need to have the previous course in biology or chemistry? Couldn’t it be any other course tined to the field?

I’m gratefull for all the answers.

PS: LPR = green card holder.

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Assuming you mean completed a bachelor’s degree outside the US, here is a post on another forum about that (although the poster is a US citizen, not a US permanent resident):

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The short answer is no. Here is an example of med school admission requirements- US degree with specified coursework across a range of STEM subjects required (as well some others), and ECs.

It’s usually much easier and cheaper (but not easy overall of course, because it’s medicine) to do an MD/medicine degree in your home country, and then do conversion /licensing exams (not sure the official name) as well as a state licensing exam, and do a US residency to practice in the US. I know a number of people who’ve gone this route - probably at least 10 from my home country (also an emerging market). It never seemed to be a problem for any of them to find residencies to complete the conversion.

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@WayOutWestMom can answer this

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The simple answer is no. Students holding baccalaureate degrees from foreign countries will not be considered for admission to US med schools.

All US medical schools require students to earn a minimum number of credits (usually 60, but could be as low as 45 or as many as 90, depending on an individual medical school’s specific policies) at a US or Canadian college or university.

Medical schools also have a list of prescribed coursework (called pre-requisites or pre-reqs) everyone must complete before they can even be considered for admission. Pre-reqs must be completed at a US or Canadian college or university.

Generally, the pre-reqs include:

  • introductory biology with labs–2 semesters
  • general chemistry with labs --2 semesters
  • organic chemistry will labs–2 semesters
  • biochemistry --1 semester
  • introductory physics with labs --2 semesters
  • written English communications skills-- 2 semesters (remedial level instruction does NOT count toward the 2 semester requirement)
  • calculus-- 1 semester
  • statistics or biostatistics (math dept-based, not business stats)–1 semester
  • introductory sociology–1 semester
  • introductory psychology --1 semester

Besides all these classes–which must be taken at US or Canadian college or university–many med schools have other requirements that may include genetics plus lab, human anatomy, human physiology, medical ethics, English language literature, public speaking.

It doesn’t not matter what your chief course of study is at university so long as you have taken all the courses I listed above.

Each medical school in the US has a different set of required classes ( it’s confusing, I know) and you must have already finished any classes a specific med school requires before you apply. If you haven’t completed a required class–you simply will not be considered for admission.

Once you have completed the pre-reqs, then you must take a comprehensive 8 hour long admission exam, called the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test).

Your test score, together with your grade point average (GPA) from your pre-reqs and your baccalaureate degree will play a large role in determining whether you will be considered for admission to a medical school.

Successful med school applicants need a MCAT score of around 510 or higher for MD med schools and 505 or higher for DO medical schools. Your GPA needs to be 3.5 or better.

Assuming you have good grades and a good test score, you will still need other things in ordered to be considered for admission.

  • You will need at least 3-5 letters of recommendations from your professors who taught you in the US. These letters will attest to your good character, your work ethic, how well you performed as a student in their class and your capacity to learn new material quickly and thoroughly.
  • You will need 50 hours or more of in-person shadowing of practicing US doctors in US healthcare settings.
  • You will need sa couple of hundred hours of UNPAID community service with marginalized and disadvantaged groups in the US.
  • You will need a couple of hundred of hours of volunteering or paid employment working directly with patients at a US healthcare setting.

Once you have collect ALL of those things Ive listed above, you can apply to US medical school and hope you’re among the 40% you do get an acceptance.

Medical school are NOT free in the US. You must have a way to pay those cost of attendance. Most student use a combination of loans, money given them by family members and any savings they have put away while they were working during or after college.

If you want to become a doctor in the US, it’s not quite as easy or straight-forward as you seem to think.

ALSO college education is the US NOT FREE. You must have a way to pay for any courses you need to take. Scholarships for US domestic students are rare and never pay 100% of the cost to attend college. Scholarship for international or newly immigrated students are exceptionally rare and never pay 100% of the costs.

You cannot earn a baccalaureate degree from a community college. Community colleges only offer the first 2 years of college level coursework. If you want to complete a baccalaureate degree, you must transfer from a community college to a different fully accredited 4 year college to finish your degree.

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I want to address this.

Yes, doctors in the US make high salaries-- though not as high as they have in the past. (Yes, physician salaries in the US are going down in many specialties.) And those salaries are not without costs.

First, if you pay for you undergrad and medical education by using mostly loans, you will have more than $500,000 in loans when you graduate from medical school. That’s a crippling amount.

Federal student loans have an 8% interest rate per year and those loans start accruing interest from the minute you receive the money. This means if you cannot pay the interest for the year, you will need to borrow even more money the next year–the $100,000 for 1 year of med school plus another $8000 to pay the interest on the previous year’s loan. or $108,000, Third you’ll borrow $100,000 for med school, plus $17,200 to pay the interest on previous loans. Every year you will be borrowing more and more $$$.

After med school, the US requires newly graduated med student to take an additional 3-7 years of training. (This is called residency and is require in ordered to earn a medical license.) During these years, you will paid a low salary–usually around $45,000- $60,000/year before state and local taxes, health insurance, social security and other required payments. Let’s say it’s about 1/3 of your salary. You will be paying for your own support and working 60-90 hours/week. You are forbidden by your medical residency contract from working at another job. (Taking a second job is huge risk–you could be fired for doing so. Being fired from residency means you will never be able to work a doctor in the US.) Now you need to start paying your loans back. Even under the most lenient of conditions, you willl need to pay 15% of your post tax income each month toward the loans–and if your 15% payment don’t equal the amount of interest you owe, the additional interest will be added to your loan basis and increase your loan amount every year.

You could end up paying 15% of your monthly income and STILL end up owing more money than you owed the year before at the end of the year.

If you become primary care doctor (most likely outcome), your salary upon finishing residency will be about $160,000/year. Sounds like a lot of money-----but…subtract 38% off the top to pay federal incomes taxes. Subtract another 6.2% to pay FICA/Social Security. Then subtract any state income taxes (figure 4-6%). Then you need to pay minimum of 15% of any remaining income to your loans. You will still need to buy health insurance (requirement of the job), disability insurance, liability insurance, life insurance, auto insurance and potentially malpractice insurance (Most employers provide it; but if you’re self-employed you pay for your own.)

You don’t end up with nearly as much money as it might appear at first glance. And if you’re paying the minimum 15% of your income toward your loans, you will be paying them for 30 years or longer.

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By what i researched is close to the impossible for IMG’s (internacional medicine graduateds) to match in US residency, the statistics are very low, close to the impossible, and for the competitive specialties it can be like that 1% or less. (still didn’t check the sources.)
It sounds that the ones who can get that usually are canadians.