In the U.S., the students who want to go into medicine start with pre-medicine or pre-med (PM) in which they take all undergraduate prerequisites, courses required prior to entering medicine. Thus, the term PRE used indicates BEFORE.
Universities in other countries may not use the Pre-Med & Medicine terms separately as in the U.S., but the Pre-Med courses are normally taught during the first year(s) of any medical program. So, out of a 5-6 year medical program in your country, the first year or two are equivalent to Pre-Med in the U.S.
- If you only graduated High/Secondary School, you need to start through Pre-Med to complete at least 90 undergraduate credit hours and all prerequisites for medicine.
- If you have only a few undergraduate course (college/university credits) completed after high/secondary school, some of those may transfer over if they’re from an accredited school and are part of the prerequisites needed. You enter Pre-Med only to complete the courses that are missing and make sure you earn at least 90 undergraduate credit hours if you don’t have a bachelor’s degree.
It is important is that you find out what the school you want to apply to requires.
Thus, even if you may not want to practice medicine in the U.S., to apply to schools that follow the U.S. curriculum, you will still need to meet the requirements of the school you want to apply to in order to get into their program.
