How to get into Harvard Medical School as an International Student

so you want to apply to Harvard Medical School as an international student let's get started in this video we're going to talk about the application requirements eligibility requirements and precisely what the process looks like so I want to start with some facts and some really cool historic stories because Harvard is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world so you know I like to hear some cool nerdy stuff Harvard Medical School was founded in 1782 and it's the third oldest medical school in the United States last year about 7 000 students applied to Harvard medical school and just 200 of them got selected the acceptance rate was just 3.3 percent the competition is insane and Harvard does a really really good job in making sure that they go through the profile all the applicants that are admitted are interviewed first it's a very skewitness process and it is extremely difficult to get in to say the least now if you were to study at Harvard you're looking at a tuition fee of 67 thousand dollars per year plus an additional five or six thousand dollars in some administrative fee but before you guys get scared with such a big number because because it is huge and multiply that by five years for the medical degree Harvard provides very generous financial aids to all of its all of its accepted students um again it's all need based so as long as you get accepted and you you demonstrate your family's need for financial aid they will cover up to one hundred percent and they have some really good sources of funding all for the financial aid their grants their lab research it's all covered now a lot of students have this misconception that because it's called Harvard Medical School there is only a medical degree at Harvard and to my surprise or even yours there are four or five different types of degree of course the medical degree being the most famous and the biggest one out of them all you can also decide to do a master's degree or even a PhD degree now your master can be done in things like biomedical Sciences Medical Science Medical Science and clinical investigation and on the other hand your PhD is like a dual degree with the MD program combined takes about seven to nine years to complete now this is ideal for Physicians who later want to go into research so it's a dual degree of that sort and to kill the hopes and dreams of all of the high school students watching this video let me give you a warning like don't turn it off the video but unfortunately there are no bachelor's level degrees at Harvard so high school students won't be able to apply anyway but that doesn't mean you can't prepare for it and later on in the video you'll see what I mean all right so to apply you'll be filling out two applications and one optional application the two applications are the amcas and the Harvard Medical School specific college application and the third optional one is the financial aid application now a big thing to remember is if you don't indicate your need for financial aid before applying and you don't fill out this Finance eventually application you will not be considered for financial aid later on so this is very important that you do this in the very beginning when you're submitting your entire college application the amcas or the American Medical College application service is sort of like the common portal that medical students use to apply to any medical program in the US so this is basically like common app right it's one portal where you can apply to all of them in addition to that Hardware has its own portal but there are specific questions only for Harvard that are asked and that is the Harvard Medical School specific portal now both the amcas and the HMS portal open sometime in June or July each year and the deadlines are in October for both of them now if you are selected onto the next round which is the interview round you can expect to hear back from Harvard sometime before January March is when all of the decisions are released so all the students hear back together at the same time whether they were accepted or rejected so let's move on to the spicy and the fun part the eligibility requirements because you guys are going to be surprised to say the least the first eligibility requirement is having a three or four year undergraduate degree now I know that in most countries um you can do a medical degree right out of high school uh countries like India for example you can do your mbbs after finishing grade 12. this is not the case for the US it's not just Harvard alone generally in the US your medical degree has to be done after your bachelor's degree so that's the difference and that's why this is a eligibility requirement is popping up but the thing that is shocking is that even though the requirement says that it you need to complete a three or to four year undergraduate degree at least one year of this undergraduate degree has to be completed in the US which means that if a student has finished his or her undergraduate from India for example they're very very minimal chances that you're going to get accepted into Harvard if you were to apply I know it's not the best news but follow along I have a roadmap and some case studies that I want to go over the second eligibility requirement is the MCAT now the MCAT is basically standardized test that students need to write when they're applying to medical schools in the US it's for any medical school so whether you apply to one or five or ten you'll be writing the MCAT and that score goes to all of them it's the equivalent of GRE GMAT S80 Act Right your MCAT scores are required now students typically write these in their final final year of undergrad or if they've taken a gap year they'll do some preparation for MCAT and then write the exam but it's but it's typically done before you start your college applications right the third eligibility is having some prerequisite coursework now what this means is before you apply to Harvard you have to have completed some specific courses now these courses in light of the recent years can be done online line and Harvard's website has a full list extensive list of what this coursework entailed but roughly it falls within the areas of Behavioral Sciences biology biochemistry physics math and writing now the next eligibility are your TOEFL or IELTS now obviously as an international student this shouldn't be a surprise since you're coming to the US you'll be required to write an English proficiency test I've seen many students get a waiver for this if you simply just write to the admissions committee letting them know that your entire high school education and undergrad was done in an English medium settings all of your transcripts are in English they may waive this requirement so you can look into that the last eligibility requirement are letters of evaluation and these are very similar to Lors or letters of recommendation but essentially you need at least three letters two from science professors one from a non-science professors and you can submit up to six so if you have professors who are ready to vouch for you you know go ahead submit six our recommendation letters but I want to address this big question which is is it worth applying to medical schools or to Harvard Medical School as an international student and to answer this I kind of made three different case studies so the first case study is if you are a high school student in for example India is it worth it for you and I want to say out of all of these the three case studies that I'm going to go over this one you guys are the luckiest and the reason being you're watching this video right now so go ahead smash the thumbs up but you're the luckiest because you have this information available to you right now so you can decide how you want to plan your undergraduate degree to satisfy that prerequisite requirement and then you can kind of plan your entire medical degree in the US if that is what your career prospects are now the smart way to go about this as a high school student would be to plan your degree in such a way that maybe after two years of undergrad you can transfer to a us-based college this isn't out of the blue this happens a lot uh students can do this there's an entire transfer application process that you can go through so by doing this you'll be able to finish that one-year study requirement or you can even just simply start your four years of undergrad in the US itself now you when you do this undergraduate degree it's known as the pre-health um professional track and this is kind of structured in such a way that your College counselors and advisors already know that the reason you're doing this undergraduate degree is to then go into medical school so your courses are structured in that way you are trained in that way your classes are all tailored towards that so they make sure that your prerequisites the courses that I was talking about all of those are taken care of the the college itself will help you prepare for the SAT you'll have other peers and other students with you who are doing the same thing so that create for a really really wholesome and motivating learning environment and then after you finish your undergrad you write your MCAT send out your applications to Harvard and other medical schools get in and along you go on your five-year MD Journey the second case study is a current International undergrad student now let's say you're in your first or second year and you're studying in India so you would be an international student if you want to come to the US um honestly if you're in your first year you can explore transferring second year onwards it becomes a little difficult but nevertheless another option that you can take which is very viable is finish your undergraduate degree in India and then come to the US for a one-year master's degree now when I went to Cornell the Cornell BME mens program that I completed I had a lot of my peers and my classmates that were doing this degree as a pre-health requirement to so that they could satisfy that one year in U.S study requirement the field was biomedical engineering they were also side by side studying for their MCAT and then after the degree the one-year master's degree they applied to Harvard and other medical schools so that is a route that you can take the reason I'm offering this alternative Masters route is because it would be much cheaper to do a one-year Masters than to do a two or three year undergraduate because you know you're multiplying that around fifty thousand dollar tuition fee times the number of years you're in the US so that's something to consider for current undergrad International students the last category that I'm going to talk about are current mbbs International students now before I go on to say what I'm going to say I want to read something right out of Harvard's website in many countries students enter Medical School directly from Advanced Secondary School otherwise known as high school but to apply to Harvard Medical School you must first complete a bachelor's degree as we learned if you are currently enrolled in any medical school or were previously enrolled you are ineligible to apply to Harvard Medical School we also do not accept students who wish to transfer from another medical school there are no exceptions to these policies what this means is if you've started your mbbs or have completed your mbbs you cannot apply to Harvard Medical School the route that I want to offer mbbs students medical students essentially is the fact that finish your medical degree and then maybe you can explore the idea of giving your USMLE step one step two and then coming to the US to practice medicine May after you come to the US to practice medicine you can then probably go into like a MD PhD program at Harvard if that's you know something that you want to do but other than that you will have the same opportunities to be a physician in the U.S maybe not you know study at Harvard but you can still practice medicine now this is where I'd like to introduce you guys to lecturio lecturio is a platform for medical students that can be used to learn for the MCAT the USMLE pre-med or even neet now you can get started for free and the cool thing is you get your very own dashboard where you can select your country preferences so Accord according to the coursework based on the degree that you're actually doing or preparing for there will be course preferences videos practice tests question Banks a note-taking system and even your own personal performance analytics to help you prepare in the most efficient way possible now if you're someone who's preparing for the US Emily lecturio has a self-assessment week that's coming up starting from the week of Feb 20th you can sign up for free the link is going to be in the description below but basically with the nbme standards lecturia self-assessment week is your buddy to help you prepare for your USMLE exams in a simulated mock environment now this means that you get to practice a 160 case questions organized in four 60-minute blocks exactly how USMLE Step 1 and step 2 CK exams would be now the useful part is that you can actually get predicted scores so you know where to improve from next time the link for the registration is going to be in the description below so check that out it's a very resourceful tool alright guys so that's all that I had for you guys in this video I know that specifically for my mbbs students I feel bad we're kind of ending on a not so great Vibe here because you obviously cannot apply to Harvard that's what you came for in this video but hey you know this isn't a Bollywood movie we don't always get Happy Endings but what we do get are alternatives because you subscribe to the crazy Medusa Channel and the USMLE is not at all a bad way to go about it I have a lot of friends who have taken this route and are here in the U.S practicing medicine as Physicians right now so you guys have a bright future you guys are becoming doctors like come on it's not you're gonna be fine so I'm gonna so I'm gonna restart a tradition of asking weird questions because I want to know who's stuck around till this point in the video it's getting pretty long but I want to know from you guys drop this in the comment below when was the first time you heard of Harvard and the fact that it was in prestigious ivy league for me personally it was through a movie believe it or not called Legally Blonde I watched it years ago go when I was maybe in undergrad that's when I first got to know about it and I did like so much research but yeah drop that in the comment below like the video if you're watching till this point subscribe to the channel and I'll see you guys very soon in the next one take care bye what are your backups I don't need backups I'm going to Harvard [Music] foreign

Channel: Crazy Medusa

Views: 28,444

Keywords: crazy medusa, saloni verma, saloni verma official, how to get into harvard, how to get into harvard from india, how to get into harvard medical school, how to get into harvard after 12th, ivy league admission, how to get into harvard from india after mbbs, harvard admission 2023, 100% scholarship in harvard, how hard is it to get into harvard, harvard financial aid for international students, usmle, usmle residency in harvard, does harvard pay for international students

Id: IYG9HzSEE5Y

Length: 14min 37sec (877 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 31 2023