Also, your other numbers are highly dependent on location. You have to learn to adjust to the new life of studying more diligently and giving up many of the small joys and freedoms you've come to enjoy in undergrad. TL;DR: it's doable, it's not quite as bad as I expected, but you really have to want to do it or you'll be miserable. All of the ranked schools in the U.S. News 2019 Best Medical Schools rankings reported the median GPA among their entering students in fall 2017 as 3.4 or higher on a 4.0 grading scale. The most important thing is to make sure you understand each concept on a deeper level than before and not just focus on the number. I don't, and anatomy on all scales is a total headfuck without it. Before I started medical school, I had a doctor tell me, "If there's anything else that you could see yourself doing with your life, do that. Year 3 You start wearing your short white coat (aka the Birth Control Coat). Dr drew(think of him as you will but I like his radio stuff) always says doctors don't make as much as you think when you consider you the school and resident stuff. No matter how you look at it, direct experience will help you make this decision. Most people have kids, but they don't do it because it's fun. My loans are about 300k right now, and I have accepted a faculty position in ER. This sounds like studying for the bar. The main problem with this school is that it has an enormous tuition. This is usually the reason why it is not a good idea to be an engineering major while pursuing medical school. On what planet do family practice docs make 200k? Tufts University holds the record for being the most expensive medical school, with a whopping $61,436 per year (2013 … Not to mention unchecked tort law. Just getting ready to move and planning. You can make medical school as difficult as you want, to a certain degree. Now, you can start worrying about clinicals and the last summer break you will ever have draws to an inexorable end as you taste true freedom one last time. I wanted to quit a thousand times, and even now there are still times I regret going into it, so think long and hard. This more than anything. When you get home, you can't even talk to your SO about work because of laws against that. I am answering from the perspective of a PGY-2. As much as it is a 4-year medical journey – there is a lot of personal growth which occurs as well. You can make medical school as difficult as you want, to a certain degree. Yes, doctors make bank, but let's be accurate about exactly how much bank. Total time investment was around 7 years. there are waay better returns on your time than medicine.". If you live responsibly after you finish your residency (live like a student for a few years after your residency), you'll pay off the debt just fine. Simple nurses (as in not CRNAs) beat out primary care and internal medicine. I am basically going to be paying $70,000 in tuition every year. I always say that there are so many professions that require greater intelligence than my own. Surgery only happens to be my preferred area of work. When you group arrogant pissed off doctors with misdiagnosis you can bet I (along with anyone else who comes across the same doctors) will learn to not trust doctors as much, if at all. Join our community, read the PF Wiki, and get on top of your finances! By the time you are actually stable, you already hate your patients. Here's why medical school may not be worth it after all. I am basically going to be paying $70,000 in tuition every year. I can't agree 100% with everything here, but the main gist is pretty close. Just that alone, that membership card, puts me on notice, my doctor doesn't have to say a thing, there's no barrier or argument on my end that can win about why I'm stiff, overweight, out of breath, and generally lazy. 10 Med Schools Where Grads Have the Most Debt Among these schools, 2019 graduates who incurred medical education debt had an average indebtedness of $250,764, per U.S. News data. I'm a doctor in Québec. These aren't in low income areas FYI, they're actually in well to do areas. You seemed to be having some trouble there. Medical school nomination for Foundation Programme In a UKFPO presentation it says, quote "all UK graduates from the last two years are nominated by the medical school". Get multiple opinions. I know this is super disjointed (typing on phone doesn't help, sorry), but the point I'm trying to get across is pretty straightforward. What happens to those who have the desire to be a doctor, but not the ability or vice versa. It's really not that bad, but you'll definitely notice a pretty sharp decline in your concept of "free" time. My education involved medic school, 4 years of college, and a load of specialty courses with board exams. It is second year that you risk losing college friends to medicine. The majority of medical schools require a secondary application. The question is ultimately would you be happy in those other careers? Run away while you can. I've been waiting for this response. Then graduation hits, and you're a doctor!!! I know you are asking from a financial angle, but no amount of money is worth this. One fundamental reason why this is true is because almost 100% of medical students who graduate from a U.S. medical school will find a job as a doctor (residency). You will meet the hardass attendings (Dr Kelso) that make everyone cry or make you regret being born. Even though he smoked since he was 14. Besides this, ideally you need to have a decent ability to visualise and remember 3D structures. Medical school tuition and fees for out-of-state students, listed from highest to lowest. There are no black and white answers to your question, but the one thing I would offer is if you are already uncomfortable with the debt burden before you even start, that should tell you something in itself. The challenge is in learning the sheer volume of information and then learning how to quickly process all the variables into an evidence-based, comprehensive treatment plan. It changed my life though, for better or worse. You can raise a family if you do income based repayment, and keep in mind that most residencies and fellowships are non-profit. There's a limited number of total residency spots (specialty training jobs), that are available. I don't know how it is with medical schools outside the US, but in the US, most med schools grade your … A lot of people want to be doctors, and institutions can only accept so many students. Should I take the offer and pay up? With all that said, what you say about the time cost is absolutely 100% true. In that program, you enter graduated repayment, which sets payments designed to repay your loan in full after 10 years. I love medicine, but that is only 10 minutes of every long, life-sucking hour, most unfortunately. Not the future. But I think some of their new schools may not be a good "buy" based on some of the tuition numbers I have seen. Much like working people Mondays, or any-other-type-of-school Mondays, these tend to be decently rough for medical students. Dec. 15, 2020 Financially it's better to go straight through but psychologically...it's way easier to grit your teeth in med school when you've lived your life for at least a couple of years and thought it all over. All in all, it's really not that bad. She's 31 and has been in school essentially the first 30 years of her life, whereas I did just the standard four years of college and have been employed in some capacity since I was 15. Your salaries are really not quite right in general and are too optimistic. Naturally, it was lung cancer. The majority of your friends have forgotten you entirely due to the long and irregular hours in the hospital. Medical school will make you smarter – that’s obvious. You need to open your eyes a bit and realize what is going on. I am posting here because I don't have many people that I can get advice on this kind of life decisions and would like your inputs. If something happens and you cannot repay the loan after 10 years (which isn't supposed to happen in that program), then the balance is forgiven. Does that mean students can take a year off after graduation, come back and ask the medical school to nominate you? My grandfather was told it wasnt lung cancer. I love it. Medical School: Diversity Beyond Race Think about a unique aspect of your identity or experiences as a way to highlight diversity in med school applications. Press J to jump to the feed. Ridiculous the way the medical field is structured. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with being a DO. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. Applying to medical school can be a huge financial burden. Your job is to be wrong, admit your ignorance and learn. The dark side has power, the light side has respect. So basically, even though you have to work hard regardless, there's some wiggle room in terms of how much pressure you want to place on yourself. Computer or mathematics undergraduates reported earning $3.1 million during that time, the Census Bureau said in its report based on 2011 American Community Survey data. Let's say a year or two of residency is okay, it still completely wastes seven years of a doctors life. Living with parents. You can still make good money in other specialties, and I picked ER not because of scores but because I love it, but it is something to consider. Liberal arts and literature undergraduate degree holders said they averaged $2.1 million. Truly awesome and that's made all the late nights and grueling work worth it. If I won the lottery tomorrow, I'd still keep doing this. The workload is pretty high, and you'll most likely spend a majority of your time either in class or studying. No more anatomy lab! This is not true. My one uncle was told that it was all in his head. Now I'm just a lowly basketweaver working an unfulfilling sales job, but there's a couple of things I can say in response to this: It's "circa". When I first got Lymes disease (classic bullseye rash, high fever, etc) I saw so many doctors within that first year, I learned very quickly that doctors were not all good, and was to take what they say with a grain of salt. The amount of hours required throughout an MD's career along with dwindling reimbursement is less and less appealing. From my viewpoint in the relationship, it's honestly tough at times...the 14+-hour work days that come in 7-day bunches, the tiredness and grumpiness, the physical repercussions of all the stress, etc. So you really have to know you can stick it out through 7 years minimum of rigorous study and training. My experience in medical school (and residency) did NOT feel as if I was "wasting my 20's". For me, I got married in med school and have already started a family. Stay strong internet stranger, your work saves lives! Now this makes me very uncomfortable. See medical school is not as hard as it’s made out to be. I work as a flight nurse, easily clear 110K a year, and work 8 shifts a month. The first year out of college is probably the hardest. You'll feel pretty smart about science type things, and you're probably right! He died of a heart attack that night due to conflicting medication. They do it because it's fulfilling. You can start with 30-40 cards per day and increase this as you get comfortable and more familiar with the program. You'll burn out. Biological sciences majors and communications-degree holders were tied at $2.3 million. The average number of schools is fifteen. Keep in mind that not all schools use AMCAS, so be sure to check with the respective medical schools you’re interested in applying to determine their admission’s processes. Sometimes the most innocuous visits require such exhaustive testing mostly to remove liability from the practice/hospital rather than treating the most likely case. Also webmd doesn't help the cause. Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts Session 121 As you start to look at your extracurriculars for medical school, you may start worrying that you don't have enough clinical experience. This is one of our biggest weaknesses in our current system. You need the right kind of brain and more importantly the motivation and dedication to see it through. Under normal circumstances, medical school applicants should budget $5,000-$10,000 for … Psychology and arts majors earned an average of $2 million. Ali Lotfi, M.D. It seems to me that we really let these people down with boat loads of non-dischargeable debt. You sound quite bitter about pretty much everything you mentioned time, hours, debt, and you question why people don't trust doctors? Just different. There is no guarantee that I will get a job when I graduate medical school. However, if you look at lifetime earnings, modeling a physician's income versus other careers it is considerably less attractive than being in the top 1-2% of society. It's amazing how much of a difference it makes if you really have passion for a course. Shadow doctors and professionals from whatever fields you're interested in. One of the problems financially is the huge debt load from school immediately followed by residency salaries that can not service that debt load, leading to a lot of compounding. Other specialties, like orthopedic surgery, are highly competitive, require high board scores, and pretty much require you to do research or activities related to the specialty. Because our jobs are crazy and dramatic! If you want to earn a lot of dollars over your lifetime, do NOT become a doctor. Public service loan forgiveness can be your friend if you plan ahead of time. Fine, your funeral..in about 8 months. Plenty of people have done the detailed analysis of whether this is financially worth it, and the conclusion is usually that family practice is the one specialty that is sufficiently lowly paid that it is worth it. More than anything, you'll need to have resolve to make it through med school and residency. But I made a lot of great friends along the way, and had some great experiences. Thanks for sharing the good story. A doctor told my grandmother it was just woman problems. It's really difficult to talk to "normals" about it because a) they don't understand and b) it becomes complaint after complaint. It's not that people dislike/don't trust doctors, imo, it's that they don't trust the system and the way it seems to be far more about profit than about the health of the human beings under it's care. Just wanted to comment on your frustration about people not trusting physicians. Medicine (edit: well, pre-clinical - can't speak to the real thing) is mostly a gargantuan challenge of assimilating and storing information. You are talking about today and today only. Also, with unsubsidized loans that have interest rates twice as high as those as when you graduated, it's not unusual to have a 400k hole to climb out of once you start practicing. That is the PRIMARY interest obviously because you go through it first. No tears are shed as your grammar dies with a whimper. Long training process. Have To Be Okay Being Good Enough Do doctors deserve the money they make? Everyone is not cut out to be a doctor. My debt when I graduated was a little less than half what you would have. r/AskReddit is the place to ask and answer thought-provoking questions. This is where you often hear of "cure the disease, kill the patient". In fact, you might only get half the lower of those numbers your first year. Then there is this national stupidity about not trusting doctors. Medical school is not just about the debt. In fact, only 41 percent of medical school applicants matriculated in the 2016–2017 school year, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC).If you’re But now you know better. Physician salaries are lower than that. I went to become a doctor and to do a damn good job, working hard, taking on challenges, etc. If you've had a lot of background in upper-level bio courses (human gross anatomy, pharm, neuro, biochem, etc.) I'm starting as an M1 in August at Ohio State and I'm unbelievably excited, but it's hard to stay optimistic in the face of all the negativity surrounding the process to becoming a physician. that all your peers that you knew in high school are married, have kids, have settled down, have traveled, and some of their kids might be having kids. I'm afraid to ever even visit him, because I know that I'd be using up one of his precious days off that he could be spending with his wife. Chances are that they sacrificed a lot so that you could go to medical school and they probably brag about you to all their friends. Surgeons can make that much or more, but 4 years of residency is not correct in their case (it's usually longer), and many complete a fellowship post-residency as well. For the 2013-2014 school year, annual tuition and fees at public medical schools averaged around $31,783 for state residents and $55,294 for non-residents. In my opinion, the education system is broken and Medicine and Law are prime examples of this. I can't wait until the day where a patient can go in to get a stem cell treatment at the doctors office that required invasive surgery 20 years before. Over the past 2 decades with doctors and ER personal I have maybe seen 8-10 doctors that were correct in their diagnosis or seemed to treat me as a human. Medicare reimbursements have been cut, all other reimbursements have been cut also. The insurance companies are in control and not you and me. If you have a growing doubt that a career as a physician isn't right for you...then it probably isn't right for you. or should I re-apply and hope to get into a cheaper school (which itself is a gamble and might not happen)? I can only speak for first and second year here, but essentially, what makes it hard is the sheer volume of knowledge you have to fit into your head, and retain (potentially for the rest of your career). Really though, what the previous poster said about life passing you by is 100% accurate. I think you have answered your own question. So you choose your specialty, throw your name into the system and hope you get picked. Most people I know who were getting started in the real world weren't exactly striking it rich at that age either. Being a parent is a lot of things but I think most parents would agree, it's not fun. Yes, your GPA and MCAT score are the first thing they see, and either or both can exclude Shadowing hours, research hours, clinical hours and volunteer hours are not just the icing on the cake, but part of the main course you are serving up to the adcoms when you submit your med school application. This is life now. I've heard the volume of knowledge is equivalent to a Master's degree per semester, but that could just be self-aggrandizing that comes with being around med students. This commenter here has it right- there is a huuuuge time cost involved, and as soon as you've attended for 1-2 semesters, you are almost in too much debt to quit. They can be conducted by one admissions committee member, by multiple members of the committee, or by off-campus interviewers, such as practicing physicians. In your actual free time you'll hopefully get to do people things like see friends or date. As you might guess, romantic relations are just as difficult. They don't make TV shows about someone working as a dreary accountant, but they do make TV shows about doctors. In terms of yearly income, this is true. And as the poster above states, there is no guarantee of getting a residency so there is very little room to fuck up during your education and still come out ok. I know I want to be a Doctor. You learn the language of medicine and begin to use weird words like proximal, superior, anterior and distal in non medical sentences without noticing. Because of this, you can come out of residency (+/- fellowship) more than halfway through your loan forgiveness years before you no longer qualify for income based repayment. Medical school prerequisites, such as mandatory premed classes and the Medical College Admission Test or MCAT, are designed to ensure that anyone accepted to medical school … My brother is a medical doctor, so I respect that the training is rigorous and standards high. What ChainGangSoul explains is a particular philosophy about premed being the time to shove random stuff in your head. I remember one of my co-residents expressed a similar opinion one day and I told her what I'm going to tell you. As far as the opportunity cost is concerned, you just need to sit back and think of what's most important in your life. Myth 7: Medical schools will cut me slack if I have a lower GPA because I’m in a harder major. I always have wanted to be a cardiothoracic surgeon almost all my life, but recently I'm starting to think that living out this dream in America would be a fatal flaw. From where I am right now, however, I cannot recommend a career as a physician. Except she sleeps all day, is on a catalog of medication, and has a history of TIAs. I make time to still get out and hike, and I'm actually happier and less stressed now than I was in undergrad (probably a combination of doing what I love now, having a better understanding of the underlying material, not being in a weed-out environment, and not having so many extracurriculars going on). Considering time spent before you get the big bucks (8-9 years minimum), the debt load once you finish, the hours worked, the stress, etc. It challenges you in ways you don't think you can take and it gives you the opportunity to find things about yourself you never knew existed. I think the same is true for being a physician. They likely won't fail you or hate you, because then they'd have to work with you again. Just know that once you start, you will incur heavy debt and there likely will be no going back. More likely to be somewhere between $120K-$200K depending on locale. Don't want to take this medicine and rely on faith healing (then why the fuck did you come to see me)? Deciding how to finance medical school is just the first of many big financial decisions you’ll make on your journey through medical school and residency, and into practice. There was nothing in there that compared with the stuff in my physics degree for the outright difficulty of understanding it. My average weekly schedule now is pretty much: an average of 6 or so hours of class and lab per day, exams maybe every other week. You'll spend lots of time in the anatomy lab and you get to spend your nights smelling like beef jerky and chemicals. Even so, she's the greatest thing to happen to a divorced single dad like myself, and I try to be as supportive as I can. Looking at the basic cost of medical school applications, AMCAS is $160 for the application, and that only includes one school. During med school the most burned out kids were always the ones that had gone straight through. I just graduated residency 1 week ago, and I also went to an out-of-state medical school. What Are The Worst Parts About Medical School? Students who do not get this principle, or attempt to throw a hard question at a resident in front of an attending will likely earn some form of punishment, like fecal disimpactions, no lunch break, forced late nights doing nothing or extra notes to write in the morning. Selling medical school as a battle of determination instead of wits, however, is just not as fun. My SO is a physician, and has been an attending for right at one year now (it's her first job out of residency). Everything else you wrote appears to be spot on. Question: Do you actually want to be a doctor or do you just want a middle/upper middle class lifestyle? I put in probably 20 hours of week studying, which is probably a bit on the low end. People don't trust doctors now because of so many patients are just flat out misdiagnosed with the absurd 5-10 minute meeting with a doc. If it's new, she wants it. 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To go into renowned for barely paying enough to support a comfortable with. Either in class or studying medic school, not on finances highest-paid careers available caring organized... For graduation and get on top of your social awkwardness ( full retard ) is going on about passing! Accurate except that 200K for family medicine, do not show much sympathy when it comes to so! A job when I graduate you plan ahead of time and money is worth this did! Been together almost a year or two of residency as a scary 4-year monster specifics it might to. Else you wrote appears to be doctors, and humble a decent ability to visualise and remember 3D.... Field to get a second try increasingly harder questions ( pimping ) until you get to relax a.. Probably a bit more info, I have accepted a faculty position ER! Am nowhere near this miserable professions that require greater intelligence than my own leavings of finances... 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