Medical school is no easy feat, especially when you’re studying in a foreign country. So when Azan Zahir Virji, Benjamin Andres Gallo Marin, and Ghazal Aghagoli connected online over this shared struggle, they knew they had to play a part in easing it for others. That’s how F-1 Doctors came to be.
This student-led organisation is a free mentorship initiative for international applicants of the medical degree (MD), Doctor of Dental Medicine (DMD), or residency programmes in the US. Pre-meds can access mentorship and guidance from reliable resources with ease online. Co-founder Virji, a Tanzanian student at Harvard Medical School, shares via e-mail that F-1 Doctors has come a long way in a short time — it now has 90 mentors from over 30 countries and has helped over 200 students collectively.