UK, Ireland or The US ?

[future_doc_?]

greetings to all ,

talk about "confusion" and "LOST" ... I need help on this ...

" I'am a highschool senior in a country i like to call kuwait, ready to finish up and go to college, early this year i started my papers in order to get to a college i can see as "good", those colleges were in the US , i applied for a major in business and i got accepted by not a bad number of colleges plus, the gov. here accepted me for a full scholarship for the business major ...

The business major I DID not like , but as a teenager PARENTS sometimes seem to think that they're right and i'm wrong ( uhh ) . With that i started a campaign against the Business major saying that i want medicine for these reasons :

a) when i was 5 years old ( i was in the states then ) i was diagnosed with diabetes. so i grew up with it, 4 shots a day etc... and till this day all doctors say i'm better than 100 %
b) i have always seen medicine as what i wanted ...end of story !
c) i love medicine & i want to help people that suffer ...
(the list goes on )

so my parents ( both PHds in business ) said ok and they're with me 100% , so medical school it is ...

ok , here i am ... today my options are :

a) the kuwaiti gov. send medical students to either ireland or the UK :
1) in ireland i'll have to do another year of highschool (leaving year) then the 1 year of foundation then premed then med. school ( 6-7 years ) my chances in a good medical school there is high, but life there SUX
2) in the UK i have to finish the IGCSE tests ( foundation year ) that's one year and then premed and then med. school .problem there : IT's harder to get accpeted in a Go0oD university ( a good placed university )

b) if i go to the states wanting a major in medicine i'll have to take premed and business as a double major thing then ( don't forget the MCAT ) medical school. if that i'll probebly go to case western reserve university ( it's not bad) problem is if i get my GPA under 3.0 i might loose the scholarship .

c) simply forget all about medical school and go for the business major... Yes , i am flexible though i love medicine

PLEASE, i know this is LONG but i'm LOST !!!

when reading ( if ) note that i'm open to any option but studying in the middle east !

thank to all ,,,,

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[IlianaSedai]

I think that any of these options sound acceptable for your situation. I myself would choose the route that costs YOU the least money.

It is not terribly difficult to maintain a GPA of 3.0 in the US, I think. However, if you want to do medicine, you will start doing medicine MUCH FASTER in the UK and Ireland. If you are planning to return to Kuwait, I think there is no obvious disadvantage through either way (UK/Ireland OR US).

 

[13538]

There are Kuwaiti students at RCSI who were accepted straight from high school into the pre-med year...are you sure the Leaving Cert is an absolute requirement for admission? Trinity College also admits Kuwaiti students but you'd have to do the first 2 years of the Natural Sciences course before transferring to the 5 year medical course. At least it beats studying for the Leaving Cert which is a pain in the ass... Apart from the astronomical cost of living in Dublin, it's not that bad!

A word on the UK medical schools...they are all equally good... Although league tables maybe useful for other subjects, they are redundant for subjects like medicine! All UK medical schools have to comply with regulations set down by the General Medical Council...at the end of the day all medical graduates have to meet the same requirements in order to register with the GMC.

If you went to the US, you have no gurantees of being admitted to a medical school there once you finish your undergrad degree. From what I've heard, gaining acceptance to a medical school in the US as an international student, even if you have completed your undergrad degree there is virtually impossible!

 

[future_doc_?]

thanx for the info and opinions , it is true that some kuwaiti students do get in strait from highschool, but that's for only 10 seats a year ( 40 students a year go to to ireland for medicine ) . i do know at least 20 students there and they all say those 10 were just lucky and the leaving is a must for the others !
problem is , evey one i know there says that " ireland is not the place to see as home for 5-7 years" .
about the subject of uk universities, it's all about " where ? " i guess i have to wait because of the uk deadlines but life in the UK is better ....
about the states, life is best, and education there is better... but making the "perfect" MCAT score would be HaAaArd ! but.....

i wish their were world medical school rankings...

 

[13538]

thanx for the info and opinions , it is true that some kuwaiti students do get in strait from highschool, but that's for only 10 seats a year ( 40 students a year go to to ireland for medicine ) . i do know at least 20 students there and they all say those 10 were just lucky and the leaving is a must for the others !
problem is , evey one i know there says that " ireland is not the place to see as home for 5-7 years" .
about the subject of uk universities, it's all about " where ? " i guess i have to wait because of the uk deadlines but life in the UK is better ....
about the states, life is best, and education there is better... but making the "perfect" MCAT score would be HaAaArd ! but.....

i wish their were world medical school rankings...

I can imagine coming from a muslim country to Ireland is a shock to the system! But life in Ireland is what you make of it...apart from the weather!!! Life in the UK is pretty much the same though!

Saying that education is better in the US is a naive assertion... Lets not turn this into a Harvard/Yale/Princeton vs Oxford/Cambridge vs Trinity/RCSI debate. It's not comparing like with like! Same goes for "world medical school rankings"...

If you are as truly committed to becoming a doctor as you say you are (from your original post anyways) then there's little point in going to the US for undergrad if you have the opportunity to study medicine in Ireland or the UK now. At the end of the day, where you get your medical degree from, whether it be from Ireland or the UK means very little...especially if you want to practice in Kuwait.

 

[leorl]

Future Doc, I may be able to help. I did my undergrad at Case Western Reserve Univ. (BAs in biology, psychology and classics (latin/greek) before deciding to go to Trinity for med school. It can be hard for people from muslim areas to adjust to schools in Ireland, just because of culture/weather/etc. I think there are two people from myself and Trinner's class who are from Kuwait, and they seem to like it well enough and be happy. I know different people have different experiences, but I will tell you that I was not happy at Case Western - not because of the lack of opportunities or the level of education, but because I wouldn't say my classmates were my kind of people. In fact, I was so burned out and unhappy that I did a visiting year (junior year abroad) program here at Trinity and had the time of my life. Your time anywhere you go IS what YOU do with it! At Case, it's quite well known - easy to get in, hard to stay in. Achieving a 3.0 at Case shouldn't be that hard, but it's not easy either...there are some core classes you'll have to take that are reknowned for doing miserably in (English being one of them). There isn't a premed major at Case, unless they've changed things in the last couple years - being premed means there's just a group of classes you need to fulfill for entry into med school and for preparation for the MCAT.

In terms of finances...US isn't really the cheapest option, since you'll have to pay tuition for undergrad and med school. (Case Western is quite expensive). Ireland - tuition at the moment is just slightly cheaper or equal to US b/c of the strong euro, but living expenses are quite high. And the UK...tuition is also relatively not too expensive but depending where you go, living expenses can be really high and in sterling.

 

[ginseng]

Saying that education is better in the US is a naive assertion... Lets not turn this into a Harvard/Yale/Princeton vs Oxford/Cambridge vs Trinity/RCSI debate. It's not comparing like with like! Same goes for "world medical school rankings"...

Hate to start a debate and add to the current view of Americans being pompous, but you're not just comparing Oxford/Cambridge and Trinity/RCSI to Harvard/Yale/Princeton. You'd also be foolish to exclude Stanford, CalTech, Columbia, UPenn, Cornell, all the other official Ivy Leagues, Johns Hopkins, and virtually every campus of the University of California system, just to name a few. While the UK has a small handful of exceptional universities, the breadth and enormous selection of world-class instituations in the U.S. is incomparable, if you're lucky to get in. I don't know which American universities the original poster go in though...

 

[leorl]

Um, really...you also have to take into account that the reason why the US may offer more class institutions is quite simply the fact that the US is about 500x (slight exaggeration) larger than both the UK and Ireland in both size and population. The number of institutions offered isn't to be taken as better quality of education.

I think what Trinners was trying to say was that the universities CANNOT be compared, because they run on different systems ("best" US vs. "best" UK/Ireland). Unfortunately, people always seem to do so.

 

[ginseng]

I realize that. I wasn't just listing those schools for the mere numbers, but to show the numbers of world class institutions in the U.S. that could match up with Oxford/Trinity. I realize that there are thousands of universities in the U.S. not worth mentioning, but that's a result of the educational system in America where anyone who can afford it basically can receive some sort of college degree.

 

[leorl]

Yes, maybe that's why name recognition is such a big thing in the US... the problem with it (and becoming a global problem) is that our degrees are now becoming obsolete. Getting a bachelor's in anything doesn't get you anywhere anymore. A BA in biology will get you the most mundane lab tech job maybe, and maybe not even then cuz they prefer BS. A bachelor's in psychology or sociology...forget it. Even an MD...in order to rise through the ranks, not only do you need an MD, you need an MBA, JD, PhD, etc. to go along with it! Yaagh!