International bachelors

[Kamyab]

Hi everyone.My situation is a little complicated.I need some guide....I live in an Asian country.I have completed my bachelors degree in cell biology in my home country,and I do not have the PR too.since my chances of getting into dentistry schools without PR is almost nothing,I need to apply for a student visa and after finishing a degree(masters or second bachelors), I must find a work and then I will be eligible to apply for PR...my questions are:

1.Do dental or medical schools in canada accept international bachelors?or I must repeat all the courses in canada again?

2.my gpa is 3.45/4.00 and my last 2 years is 3.7/4.00,should I apply for masters or second bachelors?which one help me to find a job easier? (Since I need to have 1 year work experience in canada to apply for PR)..

3.And which one help me to improve my CV?

4.And also which province is better for me to be its resident?which province is less competitive?

Thanks in advance...

 

[MedicineLCS]

Schools will accept international grades, with WES evaluations, but you're grades are simply not competitive enough for the extremely limited pool of international seats. You will need to do a second undergrad degree, absolutely nailing your grades, and get PR to get anywhere. Even then, there's no guarantee, so you'll need to decide if it's worth throwing away significant amounts of money and time for a mere chance (no guarantees) of getting in. 

[TheFlyGuy]

Unfortunately I have to agree with @MedicineLCS. Happy to get into details for your questions, but as it stands (at least from the pre-medical perspective), your GPA is not competitive for Canadian schools. The only way to remedy this would be further undergraduate studies, but as you correctly allude to, a masters would be far more useful for non-medical careers. You'll have to decide whether the extra time and money is worth it for a chance at Canadian schools (which is really the most realistic way to look at it considering the extremely competitive nature of admissions in Canada; it's a chance not a guarantee), or whether you can be happy in another career. Maybe someone more familiar with dentistry can chime in as well from that side of things, but I'm doubtful the answer would be all that different. 

It's a tough situation to be in, best of luck with your decision

[Kamyab]

3 hours ago, TheFlyGuy said:

Unfortunately I have to agree with @MedicineLCS. Happy to get into details for your questions, but as it stands (at least from the pre-medical perspective), your GPA is not competitive for Canadian schools. The only way to remedy this would be further undergraduate studies, but as you correctly allude to, a masters would be far more useful for non-medical careers. You'll have to decide whether the extra time and money is worth it for a chance at Canadian schools (which is really the most realistic way to look at it considering the extremely competitive nature of admissions in Canada; it's a chance not a guarantee), or whether you can be happy in another career. Maybe someone more familiar with dentistry can chime in as well from that side of things, but I'm doubtful the answer would be all that different. 

It's a tough situation to be in, best of luck with your decision

Thank you really for your complete answer,so as I understand,I need to apply for a second bachelors to improve my GPA if I want to apply dentistry..so should I apply for a 4 years bachelors degree? if yes is there any transfer credites for students with international bachelors like me?How about 3 years(in concordia university)or even 2 year bachelors(for example public health bachelor in Ryerson university)?

And what major is better for me to find a job after that? Biology? Biotech?health?

Thanks a lot...

 

[Kamyab]

4 hours ago, MedicineLCS said:

Schools will accept international grades, with WES evaluations, but you're grades are simply not competitive enough for the extremely limited pool of international seats. You will need to do a second undergrad degree, absolutely nailing your grades, and get PR to get anywhere. Even then, there's no guarantee, so you'll need to decide if it's worth throwing away significant amounts of money and time for a mere chance (no guarantees) of getting in. 

Thanks a lot..even if I complete my second bachelors with 3.9 and become a resident,I may be rejected?!! Is this the same for programs like master of physical therapy or optometry?..

[MedicineLCS]

It is not uncommon for people with 4.0 GPAs in Canada to be rejected, sometimes multiple times. There are many other factors involved, from the MCAT, ECs, interview performance, etc... It's worth pointing out you're disadvantaged as an international applicant in many or all of these areas. The only healthcare profession I'm knowledge about is Medicine, but other programs are generally less competitive. Of note is this is for Canadians, I was fortunate enough to win the birth lottery, but from watching friends and family go through the immigration process, it's far from easy and this could easily end up being a half decade or longer journey for you, with no guarantees of an acceptance. 

To be honest, you should probably spend some time reading through the variety of topics here and doing some soul searching surrounding what you want to do. You're casually throwing out different fields (Medicine/Dentistry/PT/Optometry/Biotech) which have differences between them and asking questions that no one can really give conclusive advice on. It'll be a lot better in the long run if you take the time to learn more about these fields yourself than accept anonymous spoonfeeding to make life altering decisions. 

[TheFlyGuy]

16 hours ago, Kamyab said:

Thank you really for your complete answer,so as I understand,I need to apply for a second bachelors to improve my GPA if I want to apply dentistry..so should I apply for a 4 years bachelors degree? if yes is there any transfer credites for students with international bachelors like me?How about 3 years(in concordia university)or even 2 year bachelors(for example public health bachelor in Ryerson university)?

And what major is better for me to find a job after that? Biology? Biotech?health?

Thanks a lot...

 

I can't really comment on dentistry, but for medicine (which is more my wheelhouse) I think that would have to be the route you take, yes. Each school is generally different in how they assess transfer credits, so like @MedicineLCS suggested above, you will have to do a lot of legwork yourself here to sort out the details... which is probably best anyways so you know you're getting accurate info rather than someone on the internet telling you something that could majorly impact your life & career haha. It's also definitely true that even with a 3.9+ gpa you can still very well get rejected, often multiple times. It will take a lot of persistence if you want to commit to the medicine route for sure, which is fine if that's your passion, just be really sure of it before you jump into the process!

As for which degree is ideal for job prospects, it sort of depends on what you want to do. In my experience with biology & life sciences though, the more general the degree the harder it is to land a job with only that degree (unless you go to grad/professional school after basically). Life sci undergrad degrees are in general fairly poor degrees to land jobs with on their own though, sadly