I am an international student.I have finished 3 years of medical studies in Egypt(medical school in Egypt is seven years and it’s undergraduate school). And i have to migrate to USA the next year and leave my study here.Can i apply for college after taking TOEFL and sat tests or I am ineligible?thank you
Are you referring to medical school? American medical schools don’t take international transfer students, so you would have to start over, IF you got in. (Very, very hard.)
If you mean can you apply to college to study something other than medicine, then yes, that is possible. However, you’ll probably be considered a transfer student, and that’s unfortunate since there is relatively little financial aid for transfers. You should also look into residency requirements in whatever state you move to. State residents (usually after at least one year living in the state) pay about half of what out-of-state students pay.
If you want to be a medical doctor, your best option is to stay in Egypt and complete your studies there. Then you could come to the US and take the foreign medical exams and apply for a residency.
If you come to the US now, you will be considered a transfer student, and you will need to choose a new field of study as an undergraduate. If most of your classes transfer, you might be able to finish an undergraduate degree in chemistry or biology in about two more years of study here.
To get help with the whole process, contact the AMIDEAST office in Cairo or in Alexandria. Their counselors can help you learn more about your options.
Ditto happymomof1.
If you want to become a doctor in the US, your best option is to finish medical school in Egypt or another non-US country and THEN move to the US. There’s a well-established path for International Medical Graduates to become licensed physicians in the US and obtain a green card:
- Get your foreign medical education certified as equivalent to a US medical education
- Pass the US Medical Licensing Exams
- Participate in the Match to the placed into a residency program. Foreign medical residents qualify for a J-1 visa.
- After your residency, you are fully licensed physician.
- As a licensed physician, you can self-petition for a green card via "physician national interest waiver". Your green card would be conditional on your working for 5 years in a "medically underserved" setting. That includes rural areas, clinics serving low-income patients, and hospitals serving military veterans.
If you don’t want to do the 5-year stint, you can also find an employer willing to sponsor a regular employment-based work visa, and later an employment-based green card, for you.
Going to medical school in the US is not a good option for most international students because medical school is expensive. Like $80,000 a year expensive. As an internationaI student, you won’t get a loan from a US bank. If you cannot afford medical school out-of-pocket, you wouldn’t be able to get a medical degree in the US at all.
As happymomof1 and katliamom said, if you want to transfer to a US educational institution now, you would apply as a transfer student to an undergraduate program. You would have to choose a major other than medicine and complete the pre-med sequence while you work on that other degree. (Pre-med = two year’s worth of chemistry and other science classes.) After you finish your Bachelor’s degree, you would apply to medical school, which is another 4 years.
Why do you “have to” go to the US next year?