OOS COA for SOM ~ over $82k per year!

I was just looking over the info for son’s SOM. Luckily, we’re instate! (altho, the instate tuition has been rapidly rising as well, but not anywhere close to this!)

It’s a public, not a private.

Shocking to see that that the OOS COA is now over $82k per year. Yikes!

I realize that some students are just happy to get in anywhere that they’ll pay whatever it costs. The med school expanded a few years ago, adding about 25 more seats to incoming MS1 classes, and the OOS numbers rose as well. I wonder if the number of Calif residents attending increased?

I guess the growth and ever-rising OOS tuition is a revenue thing.

And Alabama isn’t the most expensive public for OOS costs.

That honor goes to South Carolina where just the OOS tuition is $86,403/year. The $86K does NOT include mandatory health insurance coverage or COL expenses.

Public Med Schools

https://services.aamc.org/tsfreports/report.cfm?select_control=PUB&year_of_study=2015

Private Med Schools

https://services.aamc.org/tsfreports/report.cfm?select_control=PRI&year_of_study=2015

I think in some states OOS students can gain residency after first year and that OOS surcharge that publics add on can go away, I think? Also I’m guessing that schools have to pay MDs more to work with students is part of reason. I also think that desperate CA students will overlook the ever increasing costs.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding the chart, but the 86403 number appears under the header “TUITION & FEES & HLTH. INS.” So while it does not include COL expenses, it does appear to cover mandatory insurance as well as fees not included in tuition.

Fun fact: The 25 most expensive OOS public schools are all more expensive than the most expensive private school (commonwealth, which apparently is more expensive for OOS - didn’t know any private school did that). If we use Tufts, the most expensive school with no distinction by residence, we need to go through 27 OOS public schools.

Some of the Texas SOMs have LOW OOS costs. Wow.

Texas SOMs give in-state rates to any student who gets a scholarship worth $1000 or greater.

Texas is wonderful for OOS costs- but they take so very few (which I agree with). I remember D telling me about a friend with only a U of Illinois OOS acceptance who was completely freaking out about the COA. They were very lucky and got off a WL late at a private med school that cost $25K less per year!

^^^

Wow…a private with a tuition that was $25k per year cheaper than OOS UIUC? Wow. Was it Baylor? Baylor has a low tuition rate for SOM.

When I see how rapidly the rates are rising…and I think of a high school senior who wouldn’t even be attending in the near-future…I try to imagine what the COAs will be when he/she would be attending.

I imagine that it will become commonplace for med students to borrow $400k for med school alone. Yikes.

COA for U of Ill was over 100K for this student while COA at the private was around 75K. Not just talking about tuition alone. There may have been unit loan consideration at well (don’t know specifics).

Wow…already $100k per year for COA.

When I looked at the “tuition history” charts for instate and OOS at my son’s SOM, it was rather shocking to see that the costs have doubled in a short time.

I know that we’ve heard that each SOM spends over $100k per student (this is just tuition), so I understand the high-rising costs, but wow…just wow.

I’m glad that my son has “cheap rent” !! lol

My H.'s estimation for our D.'s COA was about $75k / year, not too far off. D. is not cheap, her rent was not cheap, but she has been living in one of the cheaper cities of the USA, with lots of nice restaurants though, that makes it a bit more expensive, and girls are more expensive than boys (with some exceptions). Her SOM was private. The difference in total tuition cost between IS public and private in our state is about $30k, not too much!

^^
Yes, I’ve seen privates cost that much. That was about the amount that we figured for son if he had gone to a private.

I’m just concerned for those who are or will be borrowing $400k for med school.

^Our local low ranked public Med. School was even much more expansive for OOS. I do not know how much it is now but 5 years ago it was $56k / year for OOS, much more than D’s private.

They will likely be the ones who will be chasing the “money” specialties.

People wonder why there is a shortage of primary care physicians, or why so many of them came from foreign medical schools. The likely answer is that many graduates of many US medical schools have so much debt that they cannot afford to go into the primary care specialties.

Does Texas, with its relatively low cost public medical schools and Baylor, have less of shortage of physicians in the lower paid specialties like the primary care ones?

Texas absolutely does have a shortage of primary care physicians, particularly in rural counties and in low income urban areas.

http://healthcare.dmagazine.com/2015/04/29/statewide-study-illustrates-physician-shortage-across-specialties-in-urban-rural-communities/

I can’t recall the name of the federal program, I’m sure you all do, that forgives med school loans in exchange for x number of years serving under-served areas and populations, presumably as a primary care physician? A cousin did that long enough to deal with her loans, but went on to teach at med school (she’s in CA).

Are there state programs like that?

The federal program is PSLF (Public Service Loan Forgiveness)

Yes, Texas has its own in-state version of this–PELRP (Physician Education Loan Repayment Program)

http://www.hhloans.com/index.cfm?ObjectID=A85AA8AA-0CD1-EDD4-D9379C7C084059FB

PELRP will repay up to $160,000 in student loan debt for physicians in primary care or mental health fields who work for 4 years in a designated medically underserved area. Participating physicians must agree to provide services to medicaid and CHIP recipients or work in the Texas Juvenile Correction System.


Many states have similar programs. My state certainly does. 

Additionally, the federal government pays supplements to hospitals in designated medically underserved areas so in turn they can offer that physicians/physician groups higher than typical salaries to physicians in all specialties. For example, at a rural hospital in critically underserved area within my state (federally designated highest need area), salaries for emergency medicine physicians, radiologists, general surgeons, OB/GYN are 30-50% higher than they are in urban/suburban areas of the state.

But the problem is that most (all?) young physicians don't stay once they complete their 4 year term of service. The high turn over contributes to many of the problems of rural medicine--lack of patient confidence in their physicians, poor staff morale, lack of continuity of care…..

@ucbalumnus I’ve always thought that myself, but ironically, the data shows that the amount of medical school debt isn’t as strong a factor in specialty choice as one would think. Whether it’s the fact that students with over 250k in debt are still 0.9x as likely to choose primary care as people with no debt (http://macyfoundation.org/docs/macy_pubs/pub_grahamcenterstudy.pdf) or students’ own opinions about how much debt influenced their choice. Only 27% of students surveyed said it was a moderate or strong factor in their choice. Contrast that with “personality fit” or “specialty content”, where 98% say that those were moderate or strong factors. (http://www.amednews.com/article/20130311/profession/130319978/4/)