International student in US High school, going to apply to US colleges

Student Lounge International Students
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<p>@b@r!um, I did not refer to your post when I post that paragraph. I wrote that just for the purpose of trying to understand the difference between these visa.</p>

<p>I used to have a coworker who had TN visa. It was the first time I heard of it. In my area of work, it is perfectly fine to use the TN-1 visa.</p>

<p>I located the following piece of info from some source (from some private blog, so I could not provide the link per CC rule):</p>

<p>The TN visa was created in 1994 under the North American Free Trade Agreement Act (NAFTA) for certain professionals holding citizenships in Canada and Mexico. There are several amazing attributes of the TN visa that make it seem much better than the H1b visa:</p>

<ol>
<li>There is No need for the employer to “sponsor” a TN visa - Canadian citizens get a better deal than Mexican citizens in that an Employer needs to provide a Labor Certification for hiring a Mexican citizen, but not for a Canadian Citizen, who only need a letter of Employment.</li>
<li>Canadian Citizens do not need to goto visa consulates - they can simply show up at the US port of Entry to have a TN visa stamped, along with supporting Documents.</li>
<li>TN visa can be indefinitely extended by one year increments</li>
<li>No annual limits on the number of TN visas, at least for Canadian Citizens.</li>
</ol>

<p>SO, I must apologize then, if I raised expectations here, because the TN visa is granted for Canadian & Mexican IMGs ONLY for teaching and research purpose. Clinical Residencies and Fellowships do not qualify for TN visas.</p>

<p>On the other hand, Nurses can and do work on TN visas in US.</p>

<p>Still all is not lost on TN visas for Canadian and Mexican IMGs since the TN visa can be of value for taking up US research jobs and saving the 6-Year Time limit on H1b visas exclusively for Residency/Fellowships. Often when a fellowship does not work out in the first attempt, IMGs take a years break doing a research job - a TN visa will again come in handy protecting the H1b years for fellowship use.</p>

<p>Download this PDF brochure from the US Department of Citizen adn Immigration Services that gives information on How to apply for TN visas and also has a list of allowed professions and the type of work allowed under the TN visa.</p>

<p>Q. So What Visa is needed for Canadian Citizens to Do residency / Fellowships in USA ?
A. Canadians are categorized as IMGs for visa purposes and will need the same visas as the rest of the IMG-world - i.e. H1b, J1 / J2 , O1 or OPT visas.</p>

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<p>

Unfortunately, it is. In-state tuition is meant for students who / whose families consider the state their permanent home. TD/TN students cannot consider Wisconsin their permanent home because the visa status explicitly requires the intent to depart the US at the end of the treaty-related business/professional activities. Here’s the actual text of Wisconsin’s residency classification rules:</p>

<p>

</p>

<p><a href=“http://registrar.wisc.edu/wisconsin_statute.htm”>http://registrar.wisc.edu/wisconsin_statute.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>It also is extremely important for this family to know that many medical schools do not admit any international students at all. Of the few that do admit a small number of international students each year, many require that the student pay the full four years of med school tuition and fees in advance. Unless the family has the sure knowledge that approximately USD 400k (or even more) will be available four years from now at med school admissions time, this student might want to pursue his medical education elsewhere.</p>

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<p>Is US$400K for both college and med school? If yes, it is likely a low estimate. The med school alone may cost less than 400K for 4 years. (e.g., the COA for a private med school is slightly higher than 80K each year. About a half a dozen med schools (out of 130+ med schools) may give the students some need-based “discount” from this full COA but the need-based scholarship is never as generous as the need-based scholarship at the college level. Also, very few merit-based scholarship is available at med school.</p>

<p>Relatively speaking, a higher percentage of med school students seem to be from a well-to-do (but not extremely wealthy) family, I think. US citizen or permanent resident students could rely on the student loans to fund their expensive med school education and pay it off in their life time (well, maybe in 10 years, assuming that they are not in the primary care - also a higher percentage of international students may become primary care doctors though. That is, they will likely be disadvantaged in this education/career path for many years, not in the areas of getting into and funding their med school education only.)</p>

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<p>I don’t know if I agree about where med school students come from, financially. I know 4 young people in med schools right now, and all four come from middle-class families, although educated families with at least one parent in academia. None of the families are helping with med school tuition; that’s all done through loans and whatever breaks (grants, financial aid) these students received from their school. </p>

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<p>I was wild-guessing the med school tuition at around $400k. But some five or six years from now, it surely will be even more than that.</p>

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<p>@katliamom, I was wild-guessing it only. i could be wrong in my guessing.</p>

<p>@happymomof1, What I posted above was just from my memory only.</p>

<p>As a more concrete example, this is the CURRENT price tag for one private med school:</p>

<p><a href=“http://medicine.yale.edu/education/finaid/md_program/resources/2014.aspx”>http://medicine.yale.edu/education/finaid/md_program/resources/2014.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>A somewhat strange phenomenon is that the average (or median?) accumulated student loans for the students at the time they graduated from such a school is roughly $125K (I may be able to locate its source but are too lazy to look it up.) This makes me wonder whether some of their families (especially the relatively few international ones) help them out financially; this is because they are not eligible for federal loans.</p>

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<p>OK, I look it up. This somewhat (3.5 years) old link shows that the indebtness (median or mean, not sure here) of the medical school students from such a school (just as an example) is $127000 or 127K when they graduate, in 2010.</p>

<p><a href=“Yale Medicine Magazine < Yale School of Medicine”>Yale Medicine Magazine < Yale School of Medicine;

<p>I believe this school is likely one of more “generous” schools. (in term of FA). Not sure how much their family’s financial resourcefulness or not has anything to do with this outcome: $127K at graduation.</p>

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<p>Here’s the latest COA (2013-14) report for all US medical schools–</p>

<p><a href=“https://services.aamc.org/tsfreports/select.cfm?year_of_study=2014”>https://services.aamc.org/tsfreports/select.cfm?year_of_study=2014&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>An international student would pay the OOS rate at every US public medical school. </p>

<p>Tuition, fees and mandatory health insurance are running in the $60-80K/year range. (Plus the student would still need money for living expenses, books, transportation and examination fees.) $100K/year is not an unreasonable estimate.</p>

<p>Only ~50 US allopathic medical schools and 18 osteopathic medical school will even consider international students for admission. Some of those 68 schools will only consider Canadians.</p>

<p>Only 5 US medical schools offer any kind of financial aid to international students. This includes loans–and most loans require a credit-worthy US co-signer. These schools are extremely competitive top schools and generally accept 0-5 international students/year. For the rest of US medical schools, the student would be to provide proof he is able to pay for costs before he will be allowed to enroll. Generally, a student will be asked to deposit 1-4 years worth of the COA in an escrow account in advance or provide a letter of guarantee from his home country’s government.</p>

<p>AAMC has data on the number of international students applying and matriculating into US med schools here:</p>

<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/download/321442/data/2013factstable1.pdf”>https://www.aamc.org/download/321442/data/2013factstable1.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Fewer than 1% of all international applicants (or approx 50-180/year) successfully matriculate into all US med school combined. Most of the matriculants are Canadian because of less restrictive admission policies and because the Canadian government provides student loans for its citizens who attend a US med school.</p>

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<p>^ A lot of good info in the post above.</p>

<p>Agree that most matriculants are Canadians - many of them may have been studying at a US college.</p>

<p>The tuitions and fees posted above are for the first year. I am not sure whether the third year tuitions costs more. But the cost of attendance (COA) which includes room and board, is higher for the third year. For one particular school where the first year tuitions is $51450, the third year COA full pay is about $83K if I remember it correctly. The amount of the “unit loans” each year which the students on FA are required to take is almost $25K. Two “benefits” for an international student at this particular school are: 1) the international student is required to provide the proof of funding for one year only (and the proof will be evaluated every year) rather than 4 years. 2) there is an institution loan (offered by the school) available for a international student - but it requires a US citizen co-signer. It seems that the loans for international students is not as good as the institution loans for domestic students. The domestic students, but not the international students, are also qualified to get loans from the federal government.</p>

<p>The international students seem to be under much more financial pressure if they are not from relatively wealthy families. So it appears to me that the higher percentage of international med school (MD-only) students are from rich families (e.g., the families which sent their child to an expensive private school at all education levels and some of their schooling are even in US.) In other words, the poorer kids are often discouraged to enter this career path.</p>