anyone plan to apply Australia medical school

[Ilms]

hi guys, anyone studying in UBC plan to apply Australia medical school? I am considering Canadian school and Australia medical school. please contact my email: fifasaxophone@hotmail.com. I need some advice on pros and cons.

 

 

thank you

[murphy303]

hi guys, anyone studying in UBC plan to apply Australia medical school? I am considering Canadian school and Australia medical school. please contact my email: fifasaxophone@hotmail.com. I need some advice on pros and cons.

 

 

thank you

 

Careful it costs $60k tuition & $20k living expenses per year, plus interest, and it doesnt look good for residencies in the future.

 

http://www.oztrekk.com/programs/medicine/pg/queensland.php

 

And the tuition was only $42k a couple of years ago... it's up to $58k, going up a few thousand every year.

 

You are looking at minimum $400,000 in debt

[stealthy1]

I don't really see a point if you're interested in doing medicine here. I applied (as partly a joke, partly because my friend was applying) via Oztrekk to a free application to Queensland. No interview, all I needed was transcript, and a form (I sent in MCAT voluntarily). Got an unconditional offer, which I declined.

 

If you ask me, unless the Canadian system starts working on allowing IMGs back into the system without an insane (note, not level playing field, but not entirely impossible either) disadvantage, there's a big problem with going overseas.

 

One of the money issues and the relative ease of getting into medicine overseas is that at least for Australia, outside countries are aware of Canadians not having enough places for medicine and are at least somewhat capitalizing on the situation. Further evidence for this can be seen in that they do not let foreign graduates have work or placements after completing the program. It's a bit of a lose-lose and the onus is yours to find a practice.

[Flow Cytometry]

I don't recommend it at all as it is extremely difficult to return for a residency spot, not to mention with all the money you spent in australia.

[Ilms]

Hi, there,

 

I got you. It is going to be difficult either staying in Australia or coming back to Canada. Because no placement in either countries. But I still want to try. One never knows.

 

Thank you for your opinion.

[murphy303]

Hi, there,

 

I got you. It is going to be difficult either staying in Australia or coming back to Canada. Because no placement in either countries. But I still want to try. One never knows.

 

Thank you for your opinion.

 

Read this article and understand what it means:

 

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1475200

 

Chances of getting a residency in the USA or Canada are incredibly small. There are so many students outside of USA and Canada now, and even within those 2 countries there is a squeeze on residency spots for their own students. Within 2 years, all the residency spots for ALL IMGs will effectively be gone within the USA.

 

Worst case scenario (and arguably a likely outcome): Without a residency you can't become a physician, you will be a doctor who can't practice medicine and your degree will be for knowledge only. Plus you'll have the debt to deal with! Your only chance to do a residency will be in Australia. I don't know a lot about landing a residency there as a Canadian but I understand it's getting tighter and tighter.

 

Anyways, best of luck with whatever you decide! Hopefully something will work out in the long run.

[Ilms]

Hi, there,

 

Actually, thank you so much for the link. It helps.

[murphy303]

Hi, there,

 

Actually, thank you so much for the link. It helps.

 

No problem

 

It's not impossible but you should be fully informed and have realistic expectations. On the other hand, the education at UQ is supposedly quite good from what I have heard.

 

Good luck!

[GREGtotheHOUSE]

Careful it costs $60k tuition & $20k living expenses per year, plus interest, and it doesnt look good for residencies in the future.

 

http://www.oztrekk.com/programs/medicine/pg/queensland.php

 

And the tuition was only $42k a couple of years ago... it's up to $58k, going up a few thousand every year.

 

You are looking at minimum $400,000 in debt

 

I thought interest doesn't kick in until AFTER residency for professional loans?

[murphy303]

I thought interest doesn't kick in until AFTER residency for professional loans?

 

Haha

 

The concept of Interest free loans means that someone else is paying the interest in your loan. There is no such thing as free interest. Even in Canada, the government is in debt, so they are loaning money to loan to you. Haha. But the are eating the interest payments to help you. In Canada, the Canadian government will loan out UP TO about $12,000 per year to each student in medicine (and that's ONLY after you file your financial statements saying that you have no savings whatsoever. If you have savings of more than >$12k then you wont get any loan at all.) In BC, the loans are integrated between province and federal, so the $12k is split between them. And interest starts after you are done paying tuition. The interest paid on these loans is a tax deduction (but that doesn't mean much in terms of saving you money...)

 

It is only these Canada Student Loans that are interest free. These only apply to Canadian medical schools. So if you go to Australia, you won't get a dime from the government and you have to fund everything yourself. Even if you want to fund privately, I've heard that a lot of banks won't even give you the loan because you're not a "sure thing"... There are higher fail-out rates for international medical students and whether or not they can cover the loan is less certain. In past years, the vast majority of Canadian med students finish med school and the banks want doctors as clients ($$$).

 

If you go to UBC Med, and you are in debt when you start school, you can expect about $10k in interest free loans and between $8k-$12k in bursaries, so your tuition is totally covered. But it all depends on your finances. in general, to get interest free you need to be a Canadian going to a Canadian school and you need to be in rough financial shape when you start (and file financial statements in the summer to apply for the loans).

 

Hope this helps

[GREGtotheHOUSE]

Haha

 

The concept of Interest free loans means that someone else is paying the interest in your loan. There is no such thing as free interest. Even in Canada, the government is in debt, so they are loaning money to loan to you. Haha. But the are eating the interest payments to help you. In Canada, the Canadian government will loan out UP TO about $12,000 per year to each student in medicine (and that's ONLY after you file your financial statements saying that you have no savings whatsoever. If you have savings of more than >$12k then you wont get any loan at all.) In BC, the loans are integrated between province and federal, so the $12k is split between them. And interest starts after you are done paying tuition. The interest paid on these loans is a tax deduction (but that doesn't mean much in terms of saving you money...)

 

It is only these Canada Student Loans that are interest free. These only apply to Canadian medical schools. So if you go to Australia, you won't get a dime from the government and you have to fund everything yourself. Even if you want to fund privately, I've heard that a lot of banks won't even give you the loan because you're not a "sure thing"... There are higher fail-out rates for international medical students and whether or not they can cover the loan is less certain. In past years, the vast majority of Canadian med students finish med school and the banks want doctors as clients ($$$).

 

If you go to UBC Med, and you are in debt when you start school, you can expect about $10k in interest free loans and between $8k-$12k in bursaries, so your tuition is totally covered. But it all depends on your finances. in general, to get interest free you need to be a Canadian going to a Canadian school and you need to be in rough financial shape when you start (and file financial statements in the summer to apply for the loans).

 

Hope this helps

 

Thank you for the response Murphy, I was actually referring to a line of credit. I remember seeing someone from Scotia Bank posting a thread on PM101 saying that a professional line of credit with them is interest free until after residency.

[murphy303]

Thank you for the response Murphy, I was actually referring to a line of credit. I remember seeing someone from Scotia Bank posting a thread on PM101 saying that a professional line of credit with them is interest free until after residency.

 

Prime lending rate is 3%, if you are lucky. So a good bank loan charges you $30 on every thousand you borrow per year.

 

If there is such thing as a interest free bank loan from a private bank (eg. Scotiabank) this does not make any economic sense to me. The government is subsidizing you by offering interest free loans, but why would a bank do that?

 

Maybe there is a minimum borrowing amount, and the amount they charge in interest on the larger principle dwarfs the amount of interest in the first few year of the loan so they delay until residency. But still, it's too good to be true. If they offer a reasonable interest rate, then there is no way this doesn't lose them money.

 

I googled it but couldn't find anything. If you have any details on this, please post! Cheers

[GREGtotheHOUSE]

Prime lending rate is 3%, if you are lucky. So a good bank loan charges you $30 on every thousand you borrow per year.

 

If there is such thing as a interest free bank loan from a private bank (eg. Scotiabank) this does not make any economic sense to me. The government is subsidizing you by offering interest free loans, but why would a bank do that?

 

Maybe there is a minimum borrowing amount, and the amount they charge in interest on the larger principle dwarfs the amount of interest in the first few year of the loan so they delay until residency. But still, it's too good to be true. If they offer a reasonable interest rate, then there is no way this doesn't lose them money.

 

I googled it but couldn't find anything. If you have any details on this, please post! Cheers

 

http://premed101.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76011 <---- This person specifically said "no interest", I'm definitely missing the catch to this story aren't I?

[Vidhya]

http://premed101.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76011 <---- This person specifically said "no interest", I'm definitely missing the catch to this story aren't I?

 

I'm pretty sure they meant "no interest payments" since there is no comma after interest. Some school loc's make you pay the interest each month, which is less than making a minimum payment on an actual loan. In this case the banks are not requiring a minimum payment or interest payment. However, interest will still accrue, so you may actually want to pay the interest if you can afford it.

[murphy303]

http://premed101.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76011 <---- This person specifically said "no interest", I'm definitely missing the catch to this story aren't I?

 

So with this, you still have to pay interest on the loan. They are still charging you interest, just not requiring that you "make a payment" every month.

 

This is sort of misleading. Some line of credits, like credit cards, require that you "make a monthly payment". With credit cards this makes sense, because the amount of debt is probably (haha, should be...) lower than your savings. So you pay the credit card out of a pile of cash that you have, thereby "making a payment" to reduce the credit card balance to zero every month. This demonstrates to the bank that you are "servicing" your debt and that you have an income. Banks don't like it when you stop making payments.

 

The same concept applies to other loans, such as lines of credit. But it's a stupid concept with a line of credit, because you will have $100,000 of debt on a line of credit and no savings (ie. no pile of cash greater than your loan--if you had this, you'd just pay off the line of credit). So if you are "making a monthly payment", really you are just paying your line of credit with money from your line of credit. Many line of credits still require monthly payments like this. Since this is sort of a stupid concept (in the context of line of credits), many line of credits just eliminate the requirement to make a payment. Generally, the minimum monthly payment is set to be equal to at least as much as the interest payment. So if you need to pay $100 a month in interest, they make that your "monthly interest payment". So with Scotiabank, you are still paying interest, you are just not required to arbitrarily make a payment from your chequing account onto the line of credit every month. You are still getting dinged 3% every month.

 

Once you graduate, you need to start "making payments"... assumes you have an income at that point.

[GREGtotheHOUSE]

Thank you guys for clearing it up for me, I can't believe I was mislead so easily.

[leviathan]

It is only these Canada Student Loans that are interest free. These only apply to Canadian medical schools. So if you go to Australia, you won't get a dime from the government and you have to fund everything yourself.

International medical students are actually eligible for Canada student loans. For private loans you are right that you can't get an unsecured LOC from the banks. You can however get a secured loan with a cosigner + some sort of collateral.

[murphy303]

International medical students are actually eligible for Canada student loans. For private loans you are right that you can't get an unsecured LOC from the banks. You can however get a secured loan with a cosigner + some sort of collateral.

 

 

my friends loan request for UQ (CS loans) got rejected