One difference I haven’t seen mentioned: in American liberal arts colleges, you can pretty much mix and match any combination of courses you want as long as you reach a certain (small) required number of courses in your major (which you don’t have to decide until halfway through or so, and can always change with minimal penalty). In England (disclaimer: I’ve never studied there, but I’ve studied in Ireland which I think is similar) you get accepted to one course and with a few exceptions you’ve got to just study that. If you’re a dilettante who likes experiencing a little bit of everything, America might be better for you. On the other hand, many American colleges require that you take a certain amount of everything, and if you know what you want and don’t want to waste time satisfying a Literature or a Foreign Languages requirement, you might prefer the English system. Obviously I know nothing about Hungary.
If you decide to stay in Hungary and pursue medicine, you might be interested in the local equivalent of an MD/Ph.D program. It would allow you to have the MD and therefore the career prospects, while still being involved in pure research. I think becoming a doctor and then spending the rest of your life in academia is probably at least as easy as getting a Ph.D in biology and then living comfortably in academia (source: wild guess) and you would have the MD to fall back on if the academia didn’t work out. The only thing you’d have to worry about is being able to make it through medical school and maybe a few years of regular medical practice while you built up your research credentials enough to switch to full-time academic work. I know nothing about the Hungarian system, but some residencies in the States have specific “research tracks” for people who want to end up in academia.
It should be noted that Yvain’s input is particularly valuable here, being familiar with schools on both sides of the pond and having studied medicine.
One difference I haven’t seen mentioned: in American liberal arts colleges, you can pretty much mix and match any combination of courses you want as long as you reach a certain (small) required number of courses in your major (which you don’t have to decide until halfway through or so, and can always change with minimal penalty). In England (disclaimer: I’ve never studied there, but I’ve studied in Ireland which I think is similar) you get accepted to one course and with a few exceptions you’ve got to just study that. If you’re a dilettante who likes experiencing a little bit of everything, America might be better for you. On the other hand, many American colleges require that you take a certain amount of everything, and if you know what you want and don’t want to waste time satisfying a Literature or a Foreign Languages requirement, you might prefer the English system. Obviously I know nothing about Hungary.
If you decide to stay in Hungary and pursue medicine, you might be interested in the local equivalent of an MD/Ph.D program. It would allow you to have the MD and therefore the career prospects, while still being involved in pure research. I think becoming a doctor and then spending the rest of your life in academia is probably at least as easy as getting a Ph.D in biology and then living comfortably in academia (source: wild guess) and you would have the MD to fall back on if the academia didn’t work out. The only thing you’d have to worry about is being able to make it through medical school and maybe a few years of regular medical practice while you built up your research credentials enough to switch to full-time academic work. I know nothing about the Hungarian system, but some residencies in the States have specific “research tracks” for people who want to end up in academia.
It should be noted that Yvain’s input is particularly valuable here, being familiar with schools on both sides of the pond and having studied medicine.