I am a IMG(no green card) currently studying medicine in Europe and hope to practice in the US in the future. But after reading a lot about how hard it is for IMG to match I’m starting to think whether trying to get into a US med school will be a better choice. Getting into US med school is also very hard for IMG. So, I hope someone could compare the possibility of matching into US as IMG and getting into US med school as IMG. In other words, which one is more doable or will have a better outcome if I put in hard work? ((my current med school is 6 years and I don’t have a college degree yet))
Probably matching into residency, especially since then you won’t have to pay for American undergrad and medical school (~$500,000).
Without a doubt the most likely path to a successful career as a doctor is to stay in Europe though.
IWBB is right.
According to AAMC, only 130 internationals out of 1160 (11%) applicants were accepted in total to all US med schools last cycle while NRMP reports that 3641 of 7366 (49%) of non-US IMGs matched this March.
Data sources:
AAMC-- FACTS tables 3 & 4 (applicants/matriculants, respectively)
https://www.aamc.org/download/321460/data/factstable3.pdf
https://www.aamc.org/download/321462/data/factstable4.pdf
NRMP http://www.ecfmg.org/news/2015/03/27/img-performance-in-the-2015-match/#sthash.KJVpWtpO.dpbs
Consider that even if you do complete your medical education in the US, there is still no guarantee you’ll match. Because of state licensing requirements (not all states will license internationals) and because many, many residency programs won’t sponsor visas for internationals, you’ll have almost as much difficulty matching for residency as a non-citzen/non-PR US med grad as you will as a IMG.
You may want to look at the results for IMGs for Match.
According to your postings on SDN, you’re mostly interested in competitive specialties. If you’ll look at p. 2 of the document above, you’ll see how many non-US IMGs matched into each specialty.
Most non-US IMGs matched into general internal medicine positions, family medicine or pediatrics.
Chart 14 (p.21) shows the percentage matching by citizenship at birth and Chart 15 (p.22) shows by country of medical education.
@iwannabe_Brown I don’t really consider the extra money as long as it greatly increase my chance of matching. I don’t have EU citizen, so residency in Europe will still be hard, although its easier than matching in the US. I really hope to Immigrate to the US in the future, so, I want to focus more on the US part.
@WayoutWestMom Thanks for the links and stats. You found my SDN post XD. It just happens that my interest is a very competitive residency in the US, so the US med school acceptance rate will be higher than the IMG matched rate into this residency training I think. I thought internationals who studied at US medschools will be a lot more competitive than IMGs. I guess I’ll just have to keep working on my green card lottery 