Hello peeps! I would like to start by giving a brief presentation of myself, well, I’m a second year medical student in my home country, which is Algeria,
I have always wanted to pursue my higher education in the United States, but due to personal circumstances, I postponed my admission process, in the meantime I started medical school in Algeria.
Now, I guess the right time has come for me, to start preparations, in order to apply to some american universities next year, I have some universities in my mind, that I’d like to apply to, but I have got some serious questions which are :
will pursuing an undergraduate education in my home country affect my chances of admission?
My home country is poorly represented in the US universities, for example, there is only one Algerian student in Harvard this year. How can this help me?
I would be grateful to any kind of responses, have a blessed evening!
Since you already started university in your home country, American universities will consider you a transfer applicant. Generally speaking, international transfer admission is very very difficult:
(a) There’s very little financial aid for international transfer students.
(b) Many universities require that transfer students complete a set of general education courses prior to the transfer. International students usually can’t do that, since foreign universities won’t allow students to take random courses outside of their own degree program.
If you want to come to the US at some point in the future, your best bet is to finish your medical degree where you are. After that, you have two options:
(1) If you want to practice medicine in the US, you can take the US Medical Licensing Exam and then apply for a residency. Once you complete the residency, you are licensed to practice medicine in the US. Then you can self-petition for a green card via National Interest Waiver for Physicians. This is a very common path for foreign-trained physicians to settle in the US.
(2) If you don’t want to practice medicine in the US, you could come to the US for a graduate degree in another field. It’s completely common to pursue a graduate degree in a different area than one’s undergraduate degree.