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btw, yes doctors do go to school for 8 years, but the last 2 years are clinical practice for which they get paid(although its minimum...close what engineers would get as their starting salary).
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<p>I have also never EVER heard of this. I have never heard of a medical student getting paid for his last 2 years of med-school. </p>
<p>I think what you are talking about is the 3-5 year residency period that happens AFTER medical school. Yes, they are getting paid for that, but only a pittance compared to the massive number of hours they are expected to work. Resident doctors are easily working 80 hours a week and getting paid only about 30-45 k to do it. They have to put up with that for several years before theystart making good money. </p>
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And you said that getting a PhD is harder than med, but that isn't so in Canada. Med is exponentially harder to get into in Canada than it is in the states.
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<p>While I can't speak to the difficulty of getting into medical school in Canada, what I will say is that getting into a US medical school is no walk in the park by any means. I'll put it to you this way. According to AMCAS, about 35,000 people apply to US med-schools every year, for about 17,000 spots. Any way you cut it, that means that more than half of all people who apply don't matriculate anywhere which almost always means that they didn't get in anywhere.</p>
<p>Furthermore, that's only talking about those who actually apply. Plenty of other people don't even apply because they know they won't get in. Let's face it. If you have bad premed grades and a bad MCAT score, you're probably not going to apply because you know you won't get in. </p>
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Ok, so lets say an engineer does more schooling, like get a masters or a PhD...then they should make more, right? No, they still don't even come close to pharmacists/lawyers.
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<p>Yeah, but this is not a fair comparison. Everybody in their right mind knows that you don't get a PhD because you think you are going to make a lot of money by doing so. I think there's universal agreement that a PhD is generally a money-losing proposition. You get a PhD because you really love your field enough to want to make an academic contribution, not because you really think it's going to give you a positive financial return. </p>
<p>But in any case, I'll put it to you this way. If you think that a guy with a PhD in engineering has it bad, what do you have to say for a guy with a PhD in English? Or a PhD in Spanish? Or a PhD in Art History? At least the engineer can take his PhD and go work in industry and make decent money. Not great money, but decent money. The guy with the PhD in English basically has no choice but to work in low-paying academia.</p>
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Again, I realize that engineers don't make a lot, when compared with doctors, lawyers, and pharmacists. But if that's the case, why don't the engineers that are unhappy with their salary go into law or med? The answer: it isn't that easy. Most engineers can't get accepted into med or law.
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<p>I completely agree with this, and I would second it to say that most people in general, not just engineers, can't get into med or law. For a lot of people, engineering really is the best they can do. It sure is more marketable than having an English degree. </p>
<p>However, like Russell7 said, for those people who get engineering degrees and think they can do better, I invite them to go and try. If you really think that pharmacy or law or medicine is better, than why not proceed into those fields, if you can make it? Nobody says that you have to work as an engineer after you get an engineering degree. Engineering therefore serves as an 'insurance policy' if you can't make it in those other professions. </p>
<p>Now it should be said that it is true that engineering grading is difficult and that grading may hurt you in surviving a GPA-intensive admissions process like law school admissions or med-school admissions. True. But that's the price you pay for insurance. There's no such thing in the world as 'free insurance'. I would further point out that I don't think that engineering is the most difficult of all majors. I would argue that physics is probably the most difficult. Mathematics is also no cakewalk. Not only are these people majoring in something extremely difficult, they don't even have the assurance of having a decent-paying job waiting for them upon graduation. Hence I would argue that if anybody is getting a raw deal, it is those guys.</p>