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How to become a doctor in the USA?

I'm not a U.S. citizen right now but my family might go there at the end of the year. Becoming a doctor in my home country is much easier as I know it (MBBS over here). But after checking online, it seems the process of becoming a doctor in the U.S. (MD in U.S.) is a very lengthy one and can be very difficult as well. I have finished high school last year and I'm doing first year university in my home country currently. The majors I'm doing here are hopeless and I'm doing it just to keep myself occupied. But my best shot at becoming a doctor is in the U.S. because I was not able to go to medical school in my home country because of a lack of funds. In my country, we go to med school immediately after high school and do a 6 year program. In the U.S., we have to go through college as well. Is it difficult for foreign students to become a doctor in the U.S. as I guess getting the needed funding for such lengthy and expensive studies may be very difficult. Money is a big issue and so is the extra 4 years college which we don't have over here. Time is also a big factor. Or should I give up on becoming a doctor and pursue something else in the U.S. because I understand it might be very difficult to become a doctor?

Public Comments

1. It is very difficult, yes, and money and time are things you are going to have to sacrifice in great abundance no matter what. First are the 4 years of college, which are more difficult than for most people, because not only do you have to have spectacular grades, but spectacular extracurriculars as well as professors who are willing to write glowing reports of you to med school admissions officers. You can major in anything you want, but you have to have the prerequisite science courses and in some cases math as well. You apply to med school at the end of your 3rd year, and you have to have taken the MCAT (Medical College Admissions Test) by then; it tests your knowledge of biology, chemistry, and physics along with your reading comprehension skills and writing abilities. Most people who make it through a premedical college track don't even get into med school; the acceptance rate is around 44%, which in this case is the chance of applying to about 15 med schools and getting into one of them. Then there's the 4 years of med school, where you actually learn how to practice medicine. The last two years have a lot of clinical and hands-on experience in hospitals and the like. After med school comes residency, another program to which you must apply. This is where you actually start making career-related money, though you'll be very lucky if it reaches $50,000 per year and you'll have to work long shifts while sleep-deprived. You'll be responsible for patients, but you'll be supervised heavily and you're still not allowed to practice medicine on your own. Residency typically is about 3 years, but some specialized areas of surgery (neurosurgery, cardiothoracic surgery, etc) may take as many as 9 years. At various points during med school and residency you have to pass the USMLE (United States Medical Licensing Examination), which comes in 3 parts. You must pass all 3 steps and be officially licensed to practice medicine if you hope to progress past residency; note that passing the exam only allows you to individually practice medicine in that state, not anywhere in the nation. Once you do complete residency, you finally have freedom as to where you can work and how you can operate; be it in a hospital or setting up private practice (although the latter is quite expensive and usually doesn't come until later in a career). You also start making respectable wages once you're licensed, and you become a ripe target for malpractice lawsuits. Now, I could have just gone over the major elements of each step, but I wanted to use more detail. The reason is that I really want to emphasize that if you're not fully committed to being a doctor, you probably won't make it (and by all accounts, don't deserve to). You're the only one who knows whether you should be a doctor or something else, but I can tell you that there are plenty of other careers that make use of science, serving the public, or both. If this is something you really want to do, great, but realize that you have to devote much of your life to it (and that devotion doesn't end with residency). And in regards to the money, realize that generous student loans mean that even if you're broke you'll still be able to do it, but you'll be paying off those loans for a while after you graduate.