Hello everybody,
I just joined these forums after lurking for a while
I am a medical student from Germany, I will (most likely) graduate at the end of this year and I am planning to go to the US next year to marry my fiancé. I am currently working on getting the necessary visa for this.
I also started looking into applying for the USMLEs and I noticed something that is giving me serious headaches: NAME CHANGE.
I am planning to get married in March 2016 and to take the first test in May 2016. Now, if I understand this correctly, if I change my name when I get married, I will have to report this to ECFMG and send them the marriage certificate (which will already take a few weeks to get anyways).
BUT, the real problem is, for the exam in May 2016 I would need to bring a form of ID that shows my new married name, and this will be pretty much impossible to do! As a foreigner on a visa, I can not immediately get a driver's license, it will take months until I get my green card, and I cannot get a new passport from my home country this quickly. It is essentially impossible to get a form of ID that shows my new married name!
So, my question is, is there really no way other option other than not changing my name and taking the tests, or changing my name and not being able to test for MONTHS until I get my green card so I have an ID with my new name?!
Does anybody know if anything can be done to test in a case like this? Surely somebody must have been in this situation before?
If this helps in any way, I would like to keep my last name and add my fiancés last name to it, so basically I would be First Name - Middle Name - My Last Name - His Last Name. So it would not be incredibly hard to tell that this is one and the same person, but of course I don't know how ECFMG sees that. Is there a way to contact them and get this sorted out?
Wow, this came out way longer than I expected, but I appreciate any help. Many thanks in advance to anyone who can maybe offer me some help in this!!!
Himbeere
I just joined these forums after lurking for a while
I am a medical student from Germany, I will (most likely) graduate at the end of this year and I am planning to go to the US next year to marry my fiancé. I am currently working on getting the necessary visa for this.
I also started looking into applying for the USMLEs and I noticed something that is giving me serious headaches: NAME CHANGE.
I am planning to get married in March 2016 and to take the first test in May 2016. Now, if I understand this correctly, if I change my name when I get married, I will have to report this to ECFMG and send them the marriage certificate (which will already take a few weeks to get anyways).
BUT, the real problem is, for the exam in May 2016 I would need to bring a form of ID that shows my new married name, and this will be pretty much impossible to do! As a foreigner on a visa, I can not immediately get a driver's license, it will take months until I get my green card, and I cannot get a new passport from my home country this quickly. It is essentially impossible to get a form of ID that shows my new married name!
So, my question is, is there really no way other option other than not changing my name and taking the tests, or changing my name and not being able to test for MONTHS until I get my green card so I have an ID with my new name?!
Does anybody know if anything can be done to test in a case like this? Surely somebody must have been in this situation before?
If this helps in any way, I would like to keep my last name and add my fiancés last name to it, so basically I would be First Name - Middle Name - My Last Name - His Last Name. So it would not be incredibly hard to tell that this is one and the same person, but of course I don't know how ECFMG sees that. Is there a way to contact them and get this sorted out?
Wow, this came out way longer than I expected, but I appreciate any help. Many thanks in advance to anyone who can maybe offer me some help in this!!!
Himbeere