Like I said, you REALLY don't want to be asking career advice from THIS forum....

 

 

yeah. it's effed up for the FP folks. 11+ years of higher education and loads of debt and you're making the same as an engineer after a few years of work.
no wonder no medschool grad wants to be an FP.

 

true. at howard it is different though. the med school curriculum is in blocks so we're only taking one class at a time although we move at a RAPID pace, attendance not mandatory. the dental students take 4 or 5 classes at once, attendance mandatory with pop quizzes, etc., even though their exams aren't as hard..it's a lot more to juggle for HUCD students than HUCM students imo

 

Dentists don't even need to do a residency.

So that's college + dental school = 8 years.

Take something like Zomax and his Interventional Cardiology....
College (4) + Med School (4) + Internal Medicine Residency (3) + General Cardiology Fellowship (3) + Interventional Fellowship (2) = 16 years of training. And that's if you go straight through....

Considering that peers that similarly graduated at the top of their college class routinely made $100-150k right out of school...

That's 12 years of lost wages: $1.2 million.
Now add the cost of medical school (tuition + living expenses): $70k x 4 = $280k.

$1,480,000 lost by the time someone like Zomax finished training.
And that's not including interest....

 

well i don't really think you can look at it 100% monetarily, which is what you're doing...

 

And if you close your eyes tightly and plug your ears with your fingers and say, "yah yah yah yah," you won't even notice life cruising by.

Obviously this isn't a discussion on "whether or not it's worth it."
We were just talking about money.

Let's talk about it again in 10 years. When your college classmates are settled in nicely and you're still working 80 hours a week for effectively minimum wage... can't afford a new car or a house, never see your children because you're working all the time... let me know how the money factors in....

I personally think it was all worth it. Because knowing myself, I wouldn't be happy doing anything else. So I'd do the job, even if the pay remained minimum wage.

My point was: you'd better really love the training and the job, because otherwise you'll burn out quickly. There are real sacrifices. And it's MORE than the money.

If you look at the surveys of doctors in primary care (including pediatrics), there is a high rate of "I wouldn't do this again if given the chance."

 

I truly enjoy the fact that Zomax has become the reference, where a new person here might actually PM him for all the details now

 

Ckit, interesting points. I met a doctor yesterday that is trying to quit medicine, and she's not the first. Despite the gobs of money she owes in loans and job security of medicine. She stated that the increased liability coupled with the continued reductions in pay (she's a gi specialist) make her job too much of a headache.

She and other's I"ve met have said that the best and brightest could have succeded in other fields and she's looking into opening a business.


To the OP- You need high to very high marks in school and a strong mcat score to get in. After that research will factor in and help if your marks are not up to par or if you want to compete for the name brand medical schools. Like ckit said, those forums are great for info. There are a lot of tricks and inside information that can help you.

To nightcrawler7188- If you think dental school is as hard as medical school.

 

at HU, sometimes it really seems like it