Getting into U.S. medical schools wasn’t easy for them. Now international students are smoothing the path for others
Long before Azan Virji entered medical school, a college counselor back home in Tanzania tried to dissuade him from coming to the U.S. to pursue a medical degree. The odds, he was told, would not be in his favor. Fewer than 3% of medical school applicants in the U.S. are international students, and only 0.5% of all medical school enrollees are from abroad.
But because Virji, now a second-year student at Harvard Medical School, had always aspired to become a physician and knew the quality of the schools here in the U.S., he kept on. Now he and several other international medical students have launched a mentorship network that helps prospective and current international medical students wade through the application process, tackle the logistics of financing their education, and handle the pressures of school once they’re enrolled in a program.
