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Comment by ejstronge | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure if you're referring to medical education in the United States.

If you are, individuals who ultimately care for patients must complete college (4 years), medical school (>4 years), and a residency program (3+ years).

Thus, training to be a physician in the US would require at least 11 years, of which at least five (the last five) would involve extensive patient contact.

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technically, an undergrad degree isn't required, only a handful of courses

whether you'd actually get admitted without one is an exercise for the reader

I'm not aware of any accredited, MD-granting US medical school that don't require an undergraduate degree prior to matriculation - do you have examples?

There are accelerated bachelors+MD programs that high schoolers can apply to; these would shave off two years of overall training time. Notably, despite being accelerated programs, these grant a bachelors degree before program participants advance to medical school.

Technically, most US medical schools don't require an undergraduate degree. However, the amount of coursework required is so large (about 3 years) that it makes sense to do a little bit extra work and get the BS anyway. It's good to have a BS degree in case you don't get into medical school.

I'm still curious about specifics - can you link to a US, MD-granting institution that doesn't require an undergraduate degree?

EDIT: I'm aware that this used to be the case but I don't believe that any schools still allow this.

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