Well, I just checked my e-mail for the first time in about a week, and noticed one from Pat Park of the Medical Board of California from July 29th. Good news for all those interested in medical school in Europe!

JAGIELLONIAN IS NOW APPROVED IN CALIFORNIA!

I checked the California website, and it is still not up yet. I haven't e-mailed Pat Park yet asking for her permission to post our correspondance, so I can't copy and paste her exact words from the e-mail, but I'll give you all the gist of it:

The 6-year program in English is approved.
The 4-year program in English is approved.

Here is the best part (depending who you are, I suppose):

This is fully retroactive! So, if you graduated from the 4-year English program 9 years ago, now you can move to California and practice there if you want!

This has a lot of implications. For one, I believe this is the only European 4-year medical program in English (outside of Britain/Ireland) that is allowed to have their grads work in California; very, very cool. Second, I'm assuming a lot more people will apply to Jag now. Would you rather go to the Caribbean or one of the most beautiful cities in Europe? This will increase competition, so I'd assume MCAT scores and GPA will increase for accepted students.

If you don't believe me (I don't blame you, this IS big news), e-mail Pat Park at:

PPark@mbc.ca.gov

Still nothing about the English prgms on the approved school list...
anyways hope Warsaw gets their lazy act togheter and get approve to..

Hey that's great news!!

When did they start the application? We are still waiting to hear something at Poznan.

This sounds like great news but maybe you can help me understand something. I was told that California was the only state ( I guess until recently) that didn't acredit Jagiellonian or Poznan. However, every other State already does anyway and only 2 provinces in Canada ( BC and Alberta) don't aprove Poznan. So why exactly is this such a big deal? I could see it would be for people who plan on practicing in Cali. I don't mean this question to be negative or rude, I'm just new to this whole "International Med School system". My number one choice is Jag. , But I guess I'm just asking for clarification on this topic.
Thanks !!

Only a couple of states "approve," medical schools; California and New York. No states accredit foreign medical schools.

As far as it being important, I think it is. First off, roughly 11% of the population of the United States lives in California. If you aren't allowed to practice there, you are keeping yourself out of a rather large market. Second, when you want to match into a residency, you want to be able to apply to a lot of programs. If your school isn't allowed to have grads practice in Cali, you can't do your residency either, which limits programs you can apply to.

And lastly, in the future, who knows what states might start to follow California's way of doing things? Some states, I think maybe New Mexico, are starting to adopt California's list of approve/disapproved schools.

Poznan students, this is good news for you, too; Pat Park had mentioned Poznan was fairly close to approval to, I believe. There's no reason to believe it won't be retroactive, since Jag's was. Then all you current students might be able to be in Cali by the time you graduate.

aha, so does anybody know if PMU is "approved" by New York?

I think it is.

Poznan is not approved for clinicals in New York if that's what you are looking for.

PMU: pomaranian medical university in szczecin... so that means no summer clinical rotations in new york? and you need those to apply for a residency? so what happens then??? what is the coming back process like?

I was talking about PUMS (Poznan), not PMU (Szczecin).........sorry!