My son is looking at his undergrad options. His first choice is to go directly into med school in the UK (he has the nationality, so we have no Brexit anxieties), but he is also looking into pre-med in the US and Canada. How would the B Med be viewed in the US?
At the moment, his ultimate goal is to do a MD-PhD and he wants the option to do that in the US. Could he transfer into a US program? What extra requirements would that entail?
When you say BMed, are you referring to the full 6-year UK medical program, or a 3-year bachelor’s?
I would take a look at the pre-med forum here on CC to get a sense of what is expected for medical school admission. In addition, the PhD component of the MD-PhD means that research experience is expected. (For more on that, look at the grad school section here.) If he’s looking at a 3-year UK program, the challenge would be fitting all of this (research, pre-med requirements, clinical experience) in. As an aside, I don’t know what the funding situation is for international MD-PhD students; most are funded through the MSTP (medical science training program), which I believe is only for US citizens. There might be some funded by the universities directly which would be open to international students, but expect it to be incredibly competitive.
I mean the full 6-years. He also has American citizenship.
He could be considered for PhD programs in the US with a 6 year BMED, but because he already holds a terminal medical degree, he would not be eligible for MD/PhD programs.
The bigger issue is that as a foreign medical graduate, he would not be able to practice medicine or get a US medical license without first completing a US medical residency.
Foreign medical grads are at severe disadvantage when applying for residencies. (US medical graduates are very strongly favored in the residency match process.) He would have to be certified by ECFMG, then take and pass the USMLEs, then enter the Match. Currently fewer than 40% of FMG match into any residency program, and those who do match tend to match into non-competitive specialties (family medicine, general internal medicine, psychiatry, preliminary general surgery) at community (non-academic) hospital residency programs.
By 2020, it’s expected that number of US medical grads will equal or exceed the number of available residency positions.
US citizenship definitely changes things. But I concur, if he wants to end up in medicine in the US, having a foreign medical degree will make it more difficult to get residency options. A US MD/PhD is definitely an option if he opts for that instead of the UK med degree, but it’s tricky to try to decide a country to go to school in based off of the possibility of getting into a very competitive program 4+ years down the road (with the chance that interests change in the meantime, as well).
However, if he’s going in to research, not being able to practice may not matter.
In which case a PhD after the 6Y English MD may be OK.
And there is the dilemma. He doesn’t know where he would prefer to live, he is not sure if he wants to practice medicine, but is very interested in bio-medical research. For a long time he self-identified as an American, but now sees himself more as a European (I think).
We did a tour in the US with a side trip to Canada these last weeks, and he was adamant that “liberal arts education” was not what he wanted, given what he was constrained to do for the French BAC. At 17, he thinks he knows the general direction he wants to go in.
I want to thank everyone for their perspectives. Extremely helpful. Worthy food for thought.
It is my Impression that at a level of highly professional specialization, it tends to work better to get qualified all the way in one system (in this case, that would be MD + PhD) and then, if desiring to move into another system, get qualified there on the strength of your professional resume. Switching midway is probably more problematic. YMMV.
If he’s not sure precisely which direction he wants to go (such as practicing medicine vs research), the US system might be a better fit since it doesn’t track you into one direction right away like going with a BMed. And there are of course plenty of non-LAC options within the US; it’s good that he has enough sense of what he’s looking for to start narrowing things down.
Lots more flexibility and room for exploration at a (North) American college/uni, certainly.