<p>I think the “dream” of becoming a doctor is rapidly changing with the changing medical insurance landscape. HMO’s and malpractice insurance are resulting in doctors who are making far less than they did a decade ago, and who as a result are in debt with student loans for much longer. My son’s rheumatologist is a recent graduate and told him that while she loves her job, her immense student loans coupled with fairly low starting salaries with an HMO have caused her regrets for choosing her career. Her husband, who is a high school teacher, started earning a living many years earlier than she did, and graduated with no debt. </p>
<p>As for the OP, I think some of the best doctors are those who developed an interest a little later in life. Sometimes, the extremely high achievers in high school have poor social skills and have devoted so much time to academics that they have trouble connecting with non-academic types. (Obviously this is not true of the majority!!!). I have seen some very bright kids who were not necessarily academically oriented in high school, suddenly blossom once they find something they are passionate about. Sometimes those kind of people make the best doctors!</p>
<p>In my upper-middle class area I have run into people who feel that “Why would a smart motivated kid go into medicine?”. They see it as way too long a process for limited financial reward. </p>
<p>Of the young people that I know actually choosing medicine and aspiring to one of the ROAD specialties I have noticed a certain amount of concern about not making it to where they want to be but even from those hoping to enter higher paying specialties there seems to be across the board acknowledgement that unless you get into some entrepreneurial offshoot it is rare to make serious money in medicine. There are certainly exceptions - the Mt. Sinai cardiac thoracic surgeon that recently operated on my H makes over 2mil/year (before his speaking/consulting fees). Of course to NYC hedge fund types 2mil/yr could be viewed as a small time. ;)</p>
<p>My daughter’s med school class has a significant minority who did other, sometimes totally unrelated things before pursuing medicine. I suspect that it is rare for someone who isn’t academically motivated to turn it around and end up at medical school but I am sure that it has happened. As stated above, there are many roads to med school.</p>
<p>Even though my dad loves to talk about how much smarter I am than he is, he always laments that I won’t make “real money” like he did in finance (although he at least acknowledges that my salary will be enough to live comfortably).</p>
<p>Kinda depends on your social peers. Most of the people I know are STEM PhDs --they don’t automatically congratulate you on your kid being a doctor; mostly they just ask if your kid wasn’t smart enough to get into grad school.</p>
<p>At our HS reunion, one of my former HS classmates had originally been an RN but everyone encouraged her to become an MD, so after serious reflection, she did go to med school and became a very successful MD.</p>
<p>Our neighbor went to med school after her youngest child finished his education. She got her MD degree in her 40s or 50s, in palliative care medicine, worked for a HMO for years and is now a medical director for competing BCBS insurance.</p>
<p>STEM PhD’s and MD do not mix well with each other in general.</p>
<p>Since STEM PhD’s who teach UG classes may teach premeds, it may cause some grieves in premed’s life. The more research oriented the affiliated graduate school is, it is possible this more likely happens at its UG. In this sense, it may make some sense to go to a “good enough” college to get a good enough grades if you just want to get into a med school in your state. However, it may be somewhat different if your goal is to get into a highly ranked research med school. </p>
<p>I remember a CCer here once posted (jokingly) that “I am a premed, and I am ashamed when I walk across the campus.” The attitude of many STEM professors toward MDs, and premeds, especially those high power professors, could result in a somewhat unhealthy environment for premeds.</p>
<p>On the lower end of the “food chain” of the PhD career, many post docs (who have not been able to secure a potential tenure track position yet) may discourage younger students to get into the PhD research track. It is not all glory for those on the academic track also, unless they are the successful ones.</p>
<p>Until the society is willing to put an emphasis on research, etc., by funding it rather than just “lip service”, it is almost irresponsible to produce too many PhDs in many fields in the traditional way, IMHO.</p>
<p>Whatever makes them feel better, I guess? That comes across as sad to me. I don’t know anyone who criticizes the effort a medical doctor put in, especially one that went through an elite med school & residency–there is no more challenging route in academia.</p>
<p>^^Oh they know what it takes. Most of them teach or have taught pre meds, including pre meds at “elite” schools. All of the individuals had the grades, the drive and the standardized test scores in undergrad that if they had wanted to be doctors, they certainly could have. They just deliberately chose not to go that way because they felt basic research was more interesting and much more intellectually challenging. </p>
<p>And we do have some MDs in the circle who are academic medicine physicians and med school faculty.</p>
<p>Still the bias is towards the basic sciences rather than ‘trade school’. (A term I first heard first used by a MD, BTW, not a research scientist.)</p>
<p>WayOutWest, I still don’t get the joke, “mostly they just ask if your kid wasn’t smart enough to get into grad school.” Am I missing something, because I don’t know many (any?) grad schools that someone bright enough for medical school couldn’t get into?</p>
<p>I interpret what they are saying as you don’t have to be a “scientist” to get into med school but you do to get into a PhD program. I tend to agree with them. My daughter got into a number of medical schools and I believe will be excellent in her chosen field. I could be way off base but I don’t think she had the science wherewithal to get into a PhD program. She certainly did not have the desire.</p>
<p>The PhDs in my family don’t view medicine as an intellectual pursuit. Of course they are already calling D with medical questions and she is still a year away from being an MD, so there you go.</p>
<p>That’s completely wrong. My experience is that the late bloomers equaled the precocious medical students. In fact, I get such a kick out of hearing my colleagues’ life stories.</p>
<p>Oh, I do… there are plenty of PhD science programs where your typical med student wouldn’t stand a chance of getting accepted because they don’t have the science ‘chops’ grad school requires.</p>
<p>Elleneast is right. You really don’t need to be a scientist go to med school. Scientists do not view medicine as an intellectual pursuit. (Hence the ‘trade school’ label.)</p>
<p>Can you all please elaborate on these PhD programs you speak of and what the requirements are for entry. I’m having trouble grasping the scope of these programs. Thank you.</p>
<p>I’m mostly talking about PhD programs in chemistry, engineering, material sciences, physics, biophysics and various biology subfields.</p>
<p>Admission requirements for a STEM PhD program will vary by discipline. But all require a good undergrad GPA (3.0+); a very good GPA (3.6+) in your field of study; multiple upper level and possibly some grad level courses taken as an undergrad in your field of interest (and earning as many As as possible doing so); significant research experience, preferrably in an area of interest you intended to continue researching; strong letters of recommendation from your supervising research advisor; a independent senior research thesis, if possible; a basic level of academic competency as demonstrate in your general GRE and field-specific GRE scores.</p>
<p>A PhD is earned thru completing academic coursework; passing a qualifying exam (or exams) in your field; and completing a major, original and unique independent research project (dissertation) that is judged by a panel of experts in your field as worthy of a doctorate.</p>
<p>A PhD dissertation essentially makes you the foremost expert in the world in your very, very specialized area.</p>
<p>This process takes anywhere from ~3 years to 8 or 9 years (in the case of particle physics–those guys take forever to get finished), with most STEM PhDs taking about 4-6 years to complete. </p>
<p>After completing your PhD, if you wish to seek employment as an academic, you will usually need to do 1 or more post-doctoral fellowships. Each fellowship lasts anywhere from 1-3 years.</p>
<p>Back to this, if I may. Do you work in a certain department of a university? The whole “most people I know” are PhD researchers seems…different. And do they really view the PhD track as more challenging than becoming an MD, or is it just tongue in cheek?</p>
<p>It is most definitely not tongue in cheek. As an MD/PhD student who has been in both worlds I can assure you that scientists view their work as conceptually more difficult than clinical medicine (which it is).</p>
<p>DH is a PhD basic science researcher at a National Lab. I work at a private biomedical research facility that mostly does basic (as opposed to clinical) research. Our friends tend to work at one place or the other. Or at other nearby research labs or research universities.</p>
<p>And, yeah, I know my worldview is skewed. I have to keep reminding my kids that it’s really unusual for everyone you know to have at least 1 PhD in the family.</p>
<p>I do not it is very unusual to enter into medicine later than the majority of medical students who go straight from College. It may even be helpful in many cases to take a few gap years. I do not however think it is wise or beneficial in most cases to wait until your 30’s and 40’s for a variety of reasons. I do agree that PHD scientists tend to look down on the intellectual abilities of MD’s. I certainly did. It turns out however that the skill set one needs to be a good physician are somewhat different than the skill set a scientists requires. In my opinion it is just as intellectually difficult to be an excellent clinician as an excellent scientist.</p>
<p>I’m laughing at mcat2 I am a teaching assistant at a university, in a major that attracts a bajillion pre-med students, and today me and the other TAs (some of whom are current medical and dental students!) were joking about how pre-meds are the worst. I don’t mean it literally - I have had several compassionate, wonderful pre-med students who I know will make wonderful doctors some day, and who I look forward to seeing at the helms of hospitals and clinics. But the premeds do tend to be the ones who aggressively badger you for more points on the homework (that they didn’t earn), ask “is this going to be on the test” and never visit office hours yet want extra credit at the end of the semester or for me to “give” them an A. I like talking to students about their career paths, but a lot of these premeds when I ask them why they are pre-med and what brings them to medicine, stare at me like I’ve grown another head. So many, especially here at my Ivy, are just driven along by the prestige and money (and sometimes family expectations, I presume, although I think most parents just want their kids to be happy and secure, and preferably not living in their basement).</p>
<p>The pre-med late bloomers are my favorites, though, because when I ask they typically have a compelling reason - a story, a passion, a love.</p>
<p>But as a PhD student, I would never look down on someone who managed to get into med school - that’s ridiculously difficult, and their grades were probably better than mine, lol. And I would absolutely discourage students interested in a PhD. Honestly, if someone were waffling between an MD and a PhD and they had the chops to get into med school, I would almost always encourage them to go to med school. It’s shorter, and the payoff is much much better.</p>
I am a teaching assistant at a university, in a major that attracts a bajillion pre-med students, and today me and the other TAs (some of whom are current medical and dental students!) were joking about how pre-meds are the worst. I don’t mean it literally - I have had several compassionate, wonderful pre-med students who I know will make wonderful doctors some day, and who I look forward to seeing at the helms of hospitals and clinics. But the premeds do tend to be the ones who aggressively badger you for more points on the homework (that they didn’t earn), ask “is this going to be on the test” and never visit office hours yet want extra credit at the end of the semester or for me to “give” them an A. I like talking to students about their career paths, but a lot of these premeds when I ask them why they are pre-med and what brings them to medicine, stare at me like I’ve grown another head. So many, especially here at my Ivy, are just driven along by the prestige and money (and sometimes family expectations, I presume, although I think most parents just want their kids to be happy and secure, and preferably not living in their basement).</p>