<p>I'm sure this question has been asked countless times... But here I go. So, is med school worth it? The cost, time, etc.? Is it similar to law in that if you can't get into one of the top schools, you might as well not go?</p>
<p>Asking this means you do not have what it takes to be a doctor.</p>
<p>No one can decide for you whether med school is “worth it”. This is something you will have decide for yourself.</p>
<p>Medicine is as much a calling as it is a profession. Individuals who go into medicine for the wrong reasons (income, prestige, family pressure) inevitably end up miserable.</p>
<p>Medicine is not like law. All US medical schools are strong. The medical school curriculum is very standardized and all med students must take and pass the same national standardized exams (USMLE and NBME) to both pass med school and to qualify for a medical license. At the end of the day whether you graduate from the #1 ranked school or the #134 ranked school, you’re still a doctor. </p>
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<a href=“A Novel Look at Physician Income: Why a medical career is the wrong career if money is one of your primary motives”>http://www.er-doctor.com/doctor_income.html</a></p>
<p>If you can see yourself being happy doing anything other than medicine, go do that.</p>
<p>An excellent blog post: <a href=“http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/abinazir/2005/05/23/why-you-should-not-go-to-medical-school-a-gleefully-biased-rant/”>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/abinazir/2005/05/23/why-you-should-not-go-to-medical-school-a-gleefully-biased-rant/</a></p>
<p>Law and medicine are different in the sense that there are an abundance of attorneys out there seeking a position, but few spots. Yet there will always be a need for doctors and others in the medicinal field, but it is competitive to get in there.</p>
<p>There are many paths to success, however, and those two are far from the only or even the most efficient ways to get there. You have to love what you do, whatever it is</p>
<p>^Ouch. I read the entire post. My sister wants to be a doctor(pediatrician) … but she’s motivated so we’ll see how it goes. </p>
<p>Thank God I want to be an engineer ;)</p>
<p>EDIT: @i<em>wanna</em>be_Brown 's link i mean</p>
<p>Please don’t let that article in any way affect your decision making; it’s got so many holes it would make Swiss cheese envious. It’s one anecdote after another, with not real research-but the little actual research cited is years-sometimes over a decade-old. When the “update” mentions the economic crash of 2008, you know you’re dealing with old information.
And seriously, comparing a UPS driver with a physician. The entire article glosses over little things-like the fact a UPS driver spends most of his time driving congested roads and lifting heavy packages and s/he is stuck outside in the freezing cold and the blistering heat, heaving packages all day long. The UPS trucks aren’t air conditioned and the heat is a joke; it’s a job that definitely allows you to feel Nature’s whims.
So ask yourself this: is there a single MD in the US who could honestly say that they’d wish they’d become a UPS driver instead of going to medical school?</p>
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<p>D1’s former roomie is a non-trad MD/PhD student. Her BF is a UPS driver. The roomie has calculated that by the time she will be just starting her practice (post PhD, post residency, post fellowship), her BF will be retiring with full benefits. He’ll be 43. There are days she finds that idea very attractive.</p>
<p>My brother in law worked for UPS for 30 years; the first 25 were as a loader/driver, and the last 5 were as a manager. He actually took a cut in pay to be a manager, as his body could no longer take the pounding. He drove for over two decades,and was in two accidents; neither was his fault. The second put him in the hospital for a week and left him a concussion and with recurrent back and shoulder problems, which he still has. He was in the rain, snow and heat for years.
And not sure what you mean by “full benefits”; first, while the retirement benefits are good, you still pay for the health insurance, etc, and the retirement salary is a % of your annual pay-in other words, there’s nothing “full” about it(nobody gets 100% of their pre-retirement salary)-and regarding benefits-you pay for what you get. So it’s important to note that “full” doesn’t mean “free.”
And yes, she finds the idea attractive; UPS is actively recruiting women, so she could get a job pretty quickly if she wanted one. My guess is she won’t. There’s something about the medical field which leads to a lot of complaining about salary; frankly, if you want to get rich head into tech or bond trading or similar. And this business of comparing medicine to being a package delivery driver is ludicrous; there is not physician anywhere who’d trade jobs. Say what you want about medicine, but it’s indoor work with no heavy lifting.<br>
The grass is always greener, I guess, but comparing these two jobs is what could most politely be described as an incomplete comparison.</p>
<p>If you want to be a doctor, then yes, med school is worth it. If you don’t really want to be a doctor, then no, med school is not worth it. </p>
<p>I’m not sure I understand what you’re really asking.</p>
<p>jalfred, talk about failing to see the forest for the trees. The point of the link I posted is that being a doctor is not this incredible financial windfall that many people claim it to be. It’s not a guaranteed cushy lifestyle driving ferraris home to your mansion. And you’re right, that data is old. Medical compensation is getting worse. In the last 40 years, if you account for inflation, physician salaries have decreased while physician hours worked have increased (<a href=“Why Doctors Are Sick of Their Profession - WSJ”>http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-s-s-ailing-medical-system-a-doctors-perspective-1409325361</a>).</p>
<p>You’re right, it’s Indoor work with minimal heavy lifting (you’ve clearly never had to catch someone who is collapsing in front of you), instead you’re disimpacting bowels, having patients and coworkers call your house in the middle of the night (how many UPS drivers work 24+ hour shifts or have to remain “on call” for packages?), having people pee, puke, poop, vomit, bleed, cough, sneeze on you regularly. I would think anyone choosing the career as a physician for the right reasons wouldn’t want to trade with a UPS driver. Someone who wants a career for nothing more than it’s paycheck should realize there are better choices than medicine - and that’s an idea that MANY people don’t grasp.</p>
<p>And not the UPS driver, but I talk to the product sales reps that roam the halls of my department who work true 9-5s, have nothing more than a college degree, and were immediately making the kind of money I won’t see until my late 30s (I’m an MD/PhD student). By the time they are my current age in their late 20s they’re already making the kind of money I won’t see until my late 40s. Again, they’re only working ~9-5. I’ll be making those salaries working twice as many hours as them. You’re right. I won’t trade. I would get bored, but if someone is like “I kinda like science but I’m more interested in making money” then I’d certainly steer them away from an academic medicine career and more towards something like product sales rep.</p>
<p>Forest for the trees? You single out the anecdote from a very old article which specifically compares being a physician with being a UPS driver in terms of salary. Nobody said anything about cushy or Ferraris or a mansion-except you. All the OP asked was whether attending medical school was worth it. And everybody’s compensation is getting worse-check out the data on attorneys, for example, for the last 20 years. It’s been straight downhill.</p>
<p>And you’re seriously comparing the minimal physical labor you do with that done by a package delivery driver? And you have people “pee, puke, poop, vomit, bleed, cough, sneeze on you regularly”? Where in the world do you work? I have a spouse and two siblings who are physicians and a niece in medical school. None of them have complained about these things occurring “regularly”-but yes, when you work with sick people, it will happen on occasion. You’ve described the job of a nurse aide-a truly grueling and thankless job-and a job that pays very poorly, if you’d like to compare. You’re the only physician-or more accurately, medical student- I’ve ever met who has made this claim of it being a “regular” occurrence… And you’re planning a career in academic medicine-so will be claiming that you face a career of “regularly” being excreted upon? Not likely, as we both know.
You made a choice-to attend medical school-and have decided to complain how awful it is compared to other jobs. Nobody made you go-it was your choice-and instead of admitting that yes, it is indoor work with very little heavy lifting(seriously, do you catch falling patients all day, every day?) you want to make the claim that being a physician is, in terms of physical rigor, the equal of any job on the planet. This I utterly reject.
And what do sales reps have to do with anything? Nobody-nobody-made you go to medical school. If it works for you great; but please spare me the lectures and the straw man arguments. You cited the UPS driver-and now the product sales reps-and want to now run away from your inapt comparison. You can’t have it both ways-complaining about physician compensation and working conditions-while at the same time declining to pursue other avenues of employment-e.g. UPS driver.</p>
<p>You’re right, I exaggerated, but the fact that you came on here to rant about the air conditioning of UPS trucks and the heavy lifting of moving packages shows you failed to grasp the point of the UPS driver comparison. UPS driver could have been any above minimum wage paying don’t take your work home with you job that does not require a college degree. The type of job that people don’t picture when they think “I want to be rich” they way they picture doctors and lawyers. There was nothing intended to be specific to the UPS driver. I pulled out those quotes because they’re the punch line to the concept of financial worth of a medical degree. The OP asked if med school is “worth it.” Particularly the time and cost of it. That sounds like a financial question, does it not? The point of the blog post is that if worth is defined simply by money and time, maybe skipping college and being a UPS driver is more worth it than becoming a doctor. Maybe I’m in the minority but that concept was a surprise to me years ago when I learned it. Medicine, unlike many careers (UPS driver again being just one of the many) requires a college degree, an advanced degree (that you pay for - unlike say a PhD or many employers will pay for an MBA), multiple years of training in an arrangement that specifically drives down salaries, only to finally reach the stage you’ve been dreaming of all along and find that the general public thinks you’re being paid too much for you do and not spending enough time with them as you try to pay off the massive debt you’ve acquired and all the time you spent training to be able to help that same public.</p>
<p>I am not the author of the blog post but I’m sure he also didn’t intend to imply that being a UPS driver is a walk in the park. There’s a lot of pressure to get those packages delivered, undamaged, to the right places, and on time. They are heavy, the trucks are uncomfortable, and if we’re “keeping score” of percentage of packages delivered correctly vs # of people cured, they’re probably ahead of physicians by a mile.</p>
<p>I am not complaining about my chosen career path. I am happy where I am because there are many aspects to my career choice that are more important than financial compensation. That’s why I wrote
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You’ve never faced a 450 pounder on the table, have you?</p>
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Not on the wards yet, and thankfully the mice are never that big</p>
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I have a number of friends who are physicians. Many of their parents were doctors and a number of their Grandfathers as well.</p>
<p>None of their children are continuing in Medicine.</p>
<p>None.</p>
<p>IWBB: “Rant”? It’s clear that you don’t like anyone disagreeing with you. And regarding “grasp”-you cited an article the central premise of which is </p>
<p>“I will demonstrate how people in seemingly much less lucrative jobs can outearn doctors. For example, who would think that a UPS driver or auto mechanic could earn more than a doctor? Probably no one except me and, in a few minutes, you, too.”</p>
<p>In other words, it’s all about the money. The article you cite mentions contractors, truck drivers, life coaches-geez, just about everybody makes more money than physicians. I had to re-read it, as it was so ridiculous I thought it may have been satire; it wasn’t. And you use the article to prove what, exactly? That the guy in front of Home Depot selling hot dogs makes $75,000/year for a part time job? Seriously? Did the author see his W-2-or would that be a 1099? It’s clear that both you and the author view this as an actual fact, when the article contains nothing but anecdotes mixed with the author’s opinions-and by citing it as authority, you clearly agree. In sum, the article you cite is patent nonsense. It’s a fact-free dissertation that totally ignores the toll that physical labor exacts from those who actually have to do it. And do you and the author really believe that personal trainers make $300,000/year? </p>
<p>And yes, comparing the two-UPS driver and physician-is a bad idea for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that one requires many more years of education. But it was the analogy(and the authority)you selected, with the author being dismissive of any and all other jobs, including nurses, police officers, active-duty military-the list goes on and on.</p>
<p>So how about using actual data to assist in the decision-making process:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm”>http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm</a></p>
<p>And to prove the actual value of anecdotes: I too know many physicains. All of them-every single one-has a child who is a physician or is in medical school. This proves…well, nothing.</p>
<p>However, the number of MCAT tests administered keeps rising</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/students/applying/mcat/data/mcat_stats/”>https://www.aamc.org/students/applying/mcat/data/mcat_stats/</a></p>
<p>And more people than ever are applying ot medical school</p>
<p><a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?;
<p>And for better or worse, salary wise, with America’s aging population, medicine does provide job security.</p>
<p>One way to look at things is the way I did and still do - I do not do anything I can hire. Therefore, my answer for both is med and law are not worth it IF you are taking out any loans and doing it for earnings only. Now, if family is paying and you just love it, then do whatever you want and just quit if you get tired of it.</p>
If you’re asking this question, then it’s not worth it. I don’t think doctors on average make that much money, not for the time and tuition and opportunity cost they have to put in to get there. You can make six figures in business/finance with just an undergrad degree, and a lot of doctors make lower six figures (family med/IM/peds) after 8 years of med school and residency. Not worth it if you’re just doing it “for the money.”