As-Salami alykum warahmatulah wabarakatuh Dear sister, I live in the USA, nyc...travelling to the USA and living here yourself will be a very bad choice. life here is a rush, so even if you meet good sisters to be around, everyone is busy with their life here and free time is hard to come by. DO NOT COME HERE UNLESS YOU WILL HAVE YOUR CLOSE FAMILY AROUND YOU OR A HUSBAND! Plus, going to med school here would mean you will bearly have time to eat and sleep, and go on 30 hour work shifts in hospitals after finishing up the first couple of yrs of classes at med school. How will you maker namaz? yoll have to make fajr without going to sleep, and one you go to sleep, how will you wake up for namaz after being up for 35 hours straight? If you can do this, alhamdulilah, and if not, alhamdulilah. Plus, expect to pay 40-80 thousand US dollars per year, depending on where you are going. I also believe that people nowadays are too attached to this phenomenon of madhabs, this didnt exist in the prophets time, but thats another story. There is no evidence saying one MUST cover the face, yet there is evidence that not doing so is permissble. Of course simple logic tells us it IS better to cover the face, but no where, to my knowledge, does it say we must cover the face. This conclusion was only reached through peoples own interpretations (i am NOT saying niqab was not worn). I personally would love to marry a sister who wears niqab, because i want to marry a pious sister and it surely is a sign of piety(but many other countless factors are invovled too). this differnece based on hadiths is a mercy from allah. here in america, wearing niqab would completely isolate you from society, this is not what islam is about. This is why i believehe issue of niqab is the mercy from Allah. If niqab was fard/wajib, why are women not allowed to wear it during hajj or salah. People must know that Islam is menat to make our lives easier, and not impose harships upon ourselves. This is why our Ummah is sturggling, we are continuously bickering of things we should not arugue about, and we end up making our religion diffucult. Allah tells us to fear him as much as we can...i would love to be able to pray 12 rakat duha and 12 rakat qiyaam and 12 rakat tahhajud, but im just not able to unless i stop doing everything else in my life; we should never overburden oversleves and impose hardships upon ourselves. Making istikhara doesnt mean you will get an answer in a dream or a "feeling," but when making it you put your decision to allah, to make whats best easy for you and whats not, to keep you away from. People nowadays refuse to accept allahs guidance, we ask allah to guide us yet we still remain treading on the path that WE want and beleive is best for us. How can we ask allah for guidance and then jsut push it to the side? One time i made istikhara about attenind al-azhar ( i live in america). When i wooke up i felt like i had to go, but thats only because it was from my nafs. i would love to dedicate my life to studying islam, but thats not for me. i found out the next day i must have memorized at least 2 juz from quran, should be fluent in arabic, and it will cost me a good deal of money to live there (im a college student here and dont work, i wont ask my parents to support me overseas, plus ill have to spend yrs to become fluent in arabic). I come from a non arab speaking family, and im the only one who was guided by allah to submit(insha'allah my family, relatives and all of us will be guided), jsut recently in the past 2 yrs. So even tho i felt like i was gonna go according to my istikhaara, allah revealed to me through knowledge and my situation that it was not feasable, given my conditions. So to me, if u made istikhara, and you are getting all these torubles and bad signs, it clearly means to stay away sister, no matter how much YOU] would love to become an MD. May allah guide us all. Ameen.