If he has interest in family med in a rural area he could try to set up an agreement with a high-need rural town/county to pay for the med education after-the-fact based on years served. It would take some research but may be worth it for a non-trad med student if family practice is of interest.
Currently, 3 med students in my family… all are doing it by taking enough loans to cover all expenses. One is married but her husband is a post-doc, and his income is very modest. No one is living high off the hog… it’s a modest existence in rentals, driving beat up little cars, and eating out that’s pretty much limited to pizza and low-cost takeouts. One begins residency soon… and thinks her $30,000 salary is a fortune!
My son is a second year med student.
It is very difficult for a med student to have the time to earn any money while in med school. Summers are typically very short (except the summer leading into med school). After college graduation, son worked as a bartender just to accumulate a good bit of money (great tips) to provide some added spending money.
Students can borrow up to the full cost of attendance, which is what it sounds like this student needs to do. He can do Stafford, GradPlus, or (I think) Discover or some other lender.
I would recommend that he not try to live alone. My son has 2 med school housemates and they share a 3 bedroom condo. This reduces son’s rent to $575 a month (including utilities and cable). Obviously, other places can be more expensive.
Although his parents don’t “have money”, they could “help” by letting him be on their cell phone plan…which can mean a nice monthly savings since it doesn’t usually cost that much to add a line to an existing acct.
I have a friend whose son tutored the SATs through med school & his residency, & earned quite a bit of money bc he was at Cornell med and tutoring in NYC. I think he was paid $175/hr. A couple of hours of earning that on a weekend & you’ve got it made. But you need to be in a high cost area like NYc, LA, maybe Boston?
This is a little hard to follow. How does saving around $40K in a free instate tuition scholarship for undergrad equate to justify spending $300K on 4 years of medical school? Wouldn’t it have been wise to consider some of those less expensive but very good medical schools? Were the other medical school costs only around $10/year less than the school attended (which could justify reallocating the $40K saved in undergrad) or was the price discrepancy higher? Its certainly an individual (family) choice as to how to spend one’s money, and some choose to do this for undergrad (pay for the most expensive out of pocket) when they do not anticipate any grad/professional school costs. All in all, a family is fortunate to be able to have the luxury of making these decisions and absorbing these costs, allowing their child to be debt free. This is a wonderful gift.
All I know that vast majority of D’s class were doing research during first summer. Very few wnet with my D’s group. Respiratory therapist job sounds great! So, he has a bit more $$ than the rest of his class, since he had a real employment during the first summer.
Tutoring, pet-sitting, and similar irregular jobs may be possible. But, really it is very hard to have any regular source of income by oneself.
A good number of med students are the children of physicians, so a good number don’t have to worry much about money. Even if they are borrowing a bit, their parents are probably still subsidizing, paying for their car insurance, their cell phones, their health insurance, etc.
My husband and I were married during med school. I worked full time as a teacher. He took an HPSP Scholarship, which pays a living stipend along with the tuition. He also worked one or two evening shifts answering the phones at the Regional Poison Control Center, a job he had started during Pharmacy School in the same city.
He finished medical school with no monetary debt. He owed time as a physician with the military, which he served as a Naval Flight Surgeon. He learned to fly helicopters, and we lived in Pensacola Florida and Hawaii during his payback years. He had a blast. So did I.
My D is currently an UG senior. She is taking an EMT class this semester and the national certification test this summer. She will take a gap year and apply to med schools this summer. She is hoping that she will be able to do an occasional shift as an EMT while in med school to earn spending money anyway.
And, primary care doctors are not the only ones that can get loans paid with service in underserved areas. Some specialties can, too I know that psych docs are in very low supply in my state and the entire state is eligible for pay back for psychiatrists. I am sure there are other eligible specialties.
“He also worked one or two evening shifts answering the phones at the Regional Poison Control Center, a job he had started during Pharmacy School in the same city.”
- So he went to both Pharmacy school and Medical school? I heard about Pharmacy School students working but I never heard of Medical students working. I wonder how they work, say if they have 12 hrs shift in rotation, which many times is much longer, then they drive to their job shift right after? I just cannot picutre a Medical Student working. I do not count “tutoring, dog sitting” etc, as jobs, these are change in a pocket.
Miami, I think everyone here agrees that once rotations begin in year three, paid employment of any kind is not likely to be a realistic expectation.
Didn’t someone upthread say they or their family member earned $175/hr doing SAT tutoring while in Med school? Thats a a FABULOUS hourly pay and NOT pocket change. Similarly, around here, a person who stays in someone’s house to pet-sit while they are away usually gets around $100/day. If they just go over to walk/feed the dog, last I priced it (it was a while ago) that was around $20 for each visit and they came 3x/day. That’s also good money, though may be inconsistent.
@MiamiDAP yes, he went to pharmacy and then medical school, and yes, he continued to work an occasional shift with the poison control center during medical school.
How did he do it? I guess he must be more brilliant than your daughter. LOL Just because you can’t imagine someone doing it doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
EastCoast- bravo. I love hearing stories of kids (a young man in this case) who have figured out creative solutions to a very big problem!!!
DD is an M1 and lives on her loans. She lives very frugally and takes less in loans than offered to save on loan debt. Working is not an option for her as the amount of studying and varying class requirements make it near impossible to have a set schedule. She will be working for two doctors over the summer to make some extra cash for the following year. Quite a few of her classmates come from wealthy families who pay for their students med school. D feels she is one of the “poorer” students. We do cover phone, dental, travel home expenses as well. She takes advantage of free meals on campus by going to lunch lectures or volunteering to meet with new potential students. She is doing great and just has to be reminded that the majority of doctors have debt and while it is a bummer that we cannot pay cash for her med school (eventhough she went to UG on a free scholy) it is the only path she has to becoming what she wants to be.
Working was never an option for my D. at Med. School. Brilliant or not, I do not know, she always refers to herself: “I am not smart, I am hard working”, so she may not be as brilliant as others, but it took her where she wanted to be way back in HS, graduating with her first choice of residency in her pocket. That was her goal and that goal also required more than most students in her Med. School class had to do for their respective goals. The pocket money that she potentially could have earned (how? - I do not know) were NOT worth to risk it. Also, she is definitely longer sleeper than most. That may be another reason why she could not drive to a place of employment after spending some 12 - 15 hours in the hospital during rotations. I can survive easily on 3 hours of sleep and sometimes it is shorter. I am not affected. D’s best option is 10 hours, not sure if she was able to do it even without working. She sleeps easily for 12 hrs during breaks.
D. is also not frugal.
As I said, we are not wealthy. But everybody has some savings and we decided to continue working past retirement age, mostly for fun though. So, it was just a decision made to pay for her Med. School, just as others decided not to pay, while many of them paid a lot for college, which we did not have to do.
As I see, the best option is to ask for family contribution, if not the full amount, then maybe some, every little bit helps.
@MiamiDAP Students come from many different types of situations, so there is not always money in the family budget to contribute towards medical school costs. It is rare to get to medical school without significant parental support, so you can trust that most parents did all they could for their children, and those who can contribute more financially, do, but to suggest that all students might as well hit up their parents for more money is a bit insensitive. Your experience is one experience of many.