Becoming a doctor is an investment, one that requires sacrifices but bears the incredible reward of being able to save lives. The most important, however, is the financial investment: medical students who cannot afford medical school outright, or who aren’t aware of the various financial fees they must pay throughout their career, can easily come out of medical school with an average of $166,750 in debt, an increase of 6.3% since 1992; this number continues to increase.
Is becoming a doctor worth it? For many in the medical community, such as KevinMD and Robert Pearl, M.D., the answer is yes, but it’s not without its pitfalls. But as these and many other doctors will tell you, knowing the financial investment you’re making into your career as a doctor will help you prepare to put these costs into focus and, hopefully, give you time to come up with a plan to minimize your debt obligation.
Location Matters
The first thing to understand is, just like choosing between a public and private medical school, where you go to medical school will affect your financial burden. Schools in the Southwest and North Central regions in America face the largest debt, whereas those in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Western regions have the least amount of debt.
Medical School and Related Costs
Just like with undergraduate schools, medical schools come with a sticker price and a net price; that is, the annual tuition and fees price and what a student, after financial aid, loans and scholarships have been factored in, actually pays for their education. The difference can be striking and may lead you to rethink the affordability of your medical school education.
Depending on your financial need and whether you can obtain scholarships, you might find yourself paying substantially less than someone who just takes out loans. Therefore, you should take a look at the scholarships and other programs that can make medical school affordable before starting the process of taking out a loan.
Getting Into Medical School
Even before getting into medical school and choosing a specialty, you must first pass the MCAT, which is one of the deciding factors of whether or not you can chase your dream. With the $310 MCAT exam price comes the application cost of the American Medical College Application Service, which most medical schools use for processing purposes; that fee is $160 for the first school and $39 for every additional school. Most medical schools require a secondary application, which can cost up to $150.
Along with MCAT exam and application fees comes MCAT private tutoring and prep course fees. Many students use a private MCAT tutor in order to provide the best possible outcome for their exam, so it’s a worthwhile investment. Students looking for an MCAT tutor in NYC or other large cities can usually find qualified tutors locally, but there are many online tutors available as well.
Work Opportunities
America has too many specialists and not enough general practitioners, and while that’s a problem in the healthcare system, students are finding it harder to say no to specialties; a report from the Medscape Physician Compensation Report, dated 2014, shows that an orthopedic surgeon can make $413,000 compared to the $188,000 that a general internist makes.
This matters because when deciding what type of medicine you practice can have a direct impact on how fast you can pay off your debt. However, it is also important to remember that specialty medicine requires a longer residency than general practice; a neurosurgeon must undertake a one-year internship and a six to eight-year residency while a general practitioner can expect a three-year residency and no internship. Although these residencies are paid, residents do not receive compensation anywhere near what they would after they have completed their residency.
Conclusion
Medical school can be quite the expense when you sit down to add up all the costs; with the average cost of attending a public school around $34,600 and a private school costing around $55,500, it can add up quickly. But for medical students who are pursuing a passion and have a good plan in place for paying for medical school, it’s the dream of a lifetime, so choose wisely.
If you enjoy the content at iBankCoin, please follow us on Twitter
