Feel free to give general advice as well but if you have any advice regarding this specific scenario, it would also be appreciated!
So I just finished my sophomore year of college so it is important I make the decision now because junior year is the most important year for both paths I’m interested in. I have narrowed down my options to medicine (physician) and finance (ib or private equity). I like both subject areas equally so I really want to choose the career path I can have success in, but I’m not sure where to start looking to figure this out.
I have concerns for both of them that are making the decision tough. There’s probably more that I can’t come up with right now
For medicine, I’m doing very well academically at a tough college but I’m always afraid I might burn out. Also interviews are important for medical school but for a bunch of student org board positions, I had an interview and I was rejected to all 3 I applied to (probably indicates that my interview skills suck but I did 0 preparation for those whereas for med school I’ll probably prepare a lot).
For finance, I’m worried about job insecurity/bad job market and getting stuck at middle management (I’m told this becomes very depressing when you’re older). I also don’t know if my networking/negotiation/position climbing skills are good enough to be successful in the field.
You are asking people to look into a crystal ball and try and predict the future of a person we never met. I think you have to go with your gut as to which career will make you happiest and most fulfilled.
Have you tried both? Shadowed doctors and IB folks?
I’d do that, as well as attend whatever presentations your college does (my kid’s has people from IB and medicine come speak at lunches and informally to students). See if there are alumni you can talk to and or shadow.
Finance is a very big field. You could work for state government developing bond issues and financing plans for road and infrastructure projects; you could work for a consumer products company figuring out how much an increase in the price of sugar impacts profitability next year; you could work for the UN figuring out the most cost effective way to use limited resources for a plan to eradicate malaria; and yes- you could work in banking.
But even in banking- I could describe 10 different career paths to you. And if you add private equity, that adds another 5 paths.
Every single career has ups and downs in terms of getting stuck in middle management. Yes, even in medicine. A friend of mine who was a part-owner of a large multi physician specialty got bought out by a big company. And despite the new company’s promises- she is now stuck as an employee of a practice she used to own and manage, has very little autonomy in terms of what kinds of patients to see and how long to spend with them. She got her hands slapped for taking on a new patient who should have been seen by a different specialist in the group (not one better qualified to treat the patient, but one who gets a higher rate of reimbursement from insurance).
Is she happy with this at the age of 55- allegedly the peak of her career? What do you think?
You don’t need to have your entire life figured out right now. Why is next year make or break for the rest of your life???
It’s not make or break for the rest of anyone’s life, but junior year is when prospective finance people apply for the summer internships that often turn into offers for permanent jobs after graduation. It’s also when a lot of pre-meds take the MCAT (giving themselves enough time to retake it if necessary, just as kids do with the SAT). Both applying for internships and preparing for the MCAT are very time-consuming. A student would have a tough time doing both at the same time.
The advice that is frequently offered to persons contemplating medicine as a career is this:
If you can see yourself being happy doing something other than medicine–do that.
Burn out and suicide among med students and physicians is a real issue. If you’re already feeling burned-out as a college sophomore–maybe medicine isn’t the right profession for you.
BTW, interviewing skills can be practiced and improved. But it takes time and a willingness to accept criticism.
At this point your options are NOT physician and finance. You have not entered medical school. You may not get into a medical school despite strong grades et al. You need a college major- premedicine is an intention, not a major. You need to decide if health care or the business world suits you most. If finance you embrace that. If you think you want to become a physician you need a plan B. You need to know what you will do with the major you choose. Of course you can major in finance and still be premed. However I don’t see you devoting time and energy attempting to get into medical school and also having the time and energy to find a finance job in addition.
If you decide to go the premed route figure out which major most interests you and what you will do with it if not medical school.
Physician here, btw- as is H. We used to tell people our (gifted) son was too smart to go into medicine. He did not- math major and added second major of computer science. He could have handled the coursework et al. But- we also could not see him wanting to go through medical school even with research as his ultimate goal. How do you want to interface with people? Do you want to deal with the gross, ugly, messy, horrendous eight or more years after college to have any time or money? WHY are you considering being a physician? Is it because of the prestige, steady job, money? What attracts you to finance? I know a great many physicians whose kids do NOT want to follow in their parent(s)’ footsteps.
You do not know the subject of “medicine”. You may enjoy the associated sciences but medicine is different. You may want to consider other allied health fields- some also require years after college if your intent is to help people with medical problems. Being a research scientist is another path for those of us who enjoy sciences (my undergrad major was chemistry). If you choose a premed major du jour (biology in my time, now neuroscience seems to be popular) be prepared to figure out what to do with it other than being a physician.
EVERY job can become depressing in middle age once you’re an expert at what you do. Physicians have a lot of boring work, regardless of the specialty- once competent in your field and you’ve done X a hundred or a thousand times it is not intellectually stimulating. Likewise no matter how high you climb in the business world any novelty can wear off. Plus, no matter which profession you choose you will have to determine how much of your life is worth devoting to it instead of a social or family life. That is one reason so many settle at some point and no longer try to reach the pinnacle- it is not worth the personal lifestyle costs.
There, said my piece. Do NOT count on getting into medical school. There are far too many qualified students vying for spots. Your competition will include those getting better grades at lesser colleges.
If you enjoy the challenges of finance as you envision it, go for it. So far you have not told us compelling reasons you think being a physician is for you. Do NOT let family pressures influence you.
I always felt that one advantage of medicine is that you know you are doing good in the world - banking not so much. I ended up in architecture because it seemed to combine all the things I liked to do - math,history, art. I’m interested in people and I like solving puzzles. It’s been a surprisingly good fit.
Ask anyone in a country with a dysfunctional banking system, no transparency, and enormous political and economic corruption what they think about the American banking industry. You’d get a different picture about “doing good in the world”. There are places in the world where children are starving while 50 miles away, tons of food sits rotting in a warehouse- the guy who owns three trucks can’t get a small business loan to finance the fuel, payroll, etc. he needs to fulfill a contract to move the food from the warehouse to hungry customers 50 miles away. There are places in the world where women can’t get a loan to buy a cow even when the revenue from the milk she’d sell to her neighbors would MORE than cover her payments, and provide her with weekly profit, and give her family an entree to a better life than subsistence farming.
I am not a banker. And banks have done (and I’m sure will do) terrible things. But there are wonderful people who work in banking, and incredible institutions working hard to create stable financial markets and payment systems which are transforming people’s lives.
To the OP- still not convinced you need to chart your entire life right now. Not convinced you know enough about either finance or medicine to make a decision.
What actually interests you? You can major in anything that interests you at this point. Nothing you do now is written in stone. I think you are overplanning and I have read the interesting idea that overplanning interferes with opportunities. Have you visited the career center? Have you done any internships or volunteering? What classes do you actually enjoy?
Also, many people have great lives while working in middle management. Exactly what is nightmarish about that for you?
There are some good books out there about the business of medicine. I recently read one by a disillusioned cardiologist. Look into nursing, emergency medicine, physicians’ assistant if health care interests you, or perhaps even policy.
The above posters know far more than I do about these specific fields. I just hate to read about a young person with ambitions when already burned out. I hope you find some clarity but it can take years and right now you have college to enjoy…
The first thing I would do is start volunteering at a nearby hospital. It will help you understand if you like working in the medical field. Also you need volunteer hours for your med school application.
If you want to go to med school, there are things you have to do to prepare.
You can major in anything (even economics!) but have to Take med school pre-reqs like Bio, Chem, Organic Chem, etc. as well
So you need to figure out how to schedule all of your courses.
OP,
You did not list any ECs, you should have done some medical ECs by now if you consider medicine. Many start them in HS to see how they feel in medical setting as it is very different from other environments. Also, it is not clear what " I’m doing very well academically " mean. For medicine, it is important to have a college GPA of 3.6+, the closer to 4.0, the better. In regard to interviews, I would not worry too much, nobody prepares for them. The most common topic of my D’s medical school interviews was her Music minor and her general interest in music. She was a bit disappointed, she likes challenges. Nonetheless, she was accepted to 4 med. schools after these interviews, into top 20s also!
Your junior year is just another year if you are pre-med with one exception. Vast majority of pre-meds are taking the MCAT after spring finals of the Junior year. You have to prepare for it a lot. I mean several hours every day for many weeks. Since all pre-meds are exceptionally busy with all kind of medical ECs and other non-related ECs and maintaining very high GPA is very important and the classes are very tough in every single college, it is a good idea to have somewhat lighter academic schedule during junior year. It is advisable to drop down from 18-19 credits to 16-17 if possible, for example, to accommodate the preparation for the MCAT. I said “if possible”, because if you have planned for pre-med, you should have had a heavier academic load in the first 2 years of college. There is an additional reason for that. Seniors are usually busy with medical school interviews. They have to deal with schedule adjustments, not only academically, but also in their jobs, internships and other responsibilities. The lighter academic schedule facilitates adjustments, like re-scheduling of tests / exams… etc.
The above points are in addition to normal requirements for medical school pre-reqs that I assumed are at least half way covered by you by now.
You are getting WAY too far into the weeds of these careers at this point in your life. You can’t predict whether you will feel burned out or “depressed” in middle management. It’s ridiculous to even think of that at age 20. Life is a journey. You have ZERO idea where the job market will be and what type of opportunities will or will not be available during your lifetime. The biggest mistake a young person can make is to think that right now is “the end of history”—that the way things are now is the way they will be in 10, 20, 40 years from now. It is not.
Just go with your gut. By the way, if you go to medical school, you can still work in the finance industry. Plenty of doctors do. And they make A LOT of money. So you are not closing yourself off to that industry if you go to medical school.
The best career advice I ever received (and this was after I graduated from college) came in the form of a question. If money weren’t a concern, what would you do? My answer was go to school forever. Obviously, that’s wasn’t a viable career path, but it did help me decide to go back to school and pursue a career in higher Ed. In essence, I’ve been in school my whole career!
So, stop asking yourself to choose between finance and medicine and start asking yourself what you’d like to do. the answer may well be “neither.”
My older daughter knew she wanted to go into finance since high school. I had her talk to a lot of my friends and shadowed them to make sure that’s what she wanted. Five years after working in banking, she started to get bored even though she was doing well. I encouraged her to talk to her mentor(s) at work and her friends in other fields. She found out her friends’ jobs were not better, her manager promoted her and gave her additional responsibilities, which made the job a lot more interesting. She may get bored again in few years and she may change her career down the road. She may get out of finance completely. This is very typical for many of us. We do not necessary stay with one career our entire life. There is no such thing as make or break when it comes to career choices. You can be a banker for 2 years and decide to study medicine later. What is important is to figure out if your personality is suited for certain careers, otherwise you could be miserable.
I would encourage you to do some job shadowing this summer, or at least talk to some adults in similar careers.
I am married to a physician, and I think @wis75 's post is right on the money. We have certainly not encouraged our sons to go into medicine. For some people it is all they ever want, but medicine is changing and not in good ways. The bureaucracy is very tedious and being your own boss (private practice) is quickly becoming a thing of the past. My husband would not do it again if he had a do over.
Obviously, if you really have the passion for it, that’s one thing. But if you aren’t sure, I would try finance first.
I have been doing a lot of pre-med extra curricular activities so far. Last summer and this current one, I have been in a research internship/summer program, and I joined a lab second semester sophomore year and also did shadowing throughout the year. I’ve done a bit of volunteering (science related) but nothing clinical yet. The rest of my ECs are clubs/a sport team which is not really exclusive to medicine
That said I added a financial economics minor this past year and found the subject really interesting. Some of my friends have done some finance internships and it sounds like something I would want to try, which is why I’m still weighing that area despite little real world experience compared to the bit of experience I have in the medical field.
I don’t think my studies/experiences are exclusive to medicine though. A lot of the research skills I’ve gained are transferable to finance and my major (neuroscience) has a psychology side that can be useful in the behavioral psychology aspect of finance (also finance in the health field is a possibility, and I’m told firms love STEM majors)
@WayOutWestMom right now, I don’t think I’m burning out. Sometimes the work makes me a little weary but I think most students experience this (based on how they talk about the coursework). That said like you said it’s not unheard of for aspiring physicians to burn out and I guess that worries me (more than it should? maybe…)
@wis75 can you explain too smart for medicine? I’ve never heard that before haha although that sounds like an interesting perspective
@miamidap I have the 3.6+ GPA (3.82 and almost 3.9 science)
I mentioned some ECs above and they’re mostly med school related or neutral so I’ve been leaning med school for a while. I have done volunteering (teaching science lessons to students in nearby schools as part of a volunteering student org) but nothing at my hospital. How do med schools treat “normal” volunteering vs clinical volunteering?
And is 18-19 the expectation for med school applicants? I’ve always done 14 (but labs add “hidden” hours…) but maintaining two science classes a semester. I need 120 hours to graduate and I think I get 18 credits from APs (none are going toward the pre med reqs though) so 14/semester works out really well and keeps it manageable.
@compmom I heard you don’t want to get stuck in middle management because there’s no sense of progression and because it gets kind of disheartening when people younger than you start jumping over you position wise. I guess I’d say I’m extremely competitive right now and it doesn’t sound like something I would be happy with. However someone above said that as you get older you develop a better sense of importance of your personal life so that kind of wears down
“How do med schools treat “normal” volunteering vs clinical volunteering?” - my D. did clinical volunteering during HS, which does not count. Then, while at college, she volunteered for 3 years at the local hotline, which involved a heavy duty training. This volunteering was NOT clinical, but it was the most important in her life as she learned a very valuable skill of talking to people in great distress and on the brink of committing suicide. She was able to save at least one life (according to police). This volunteering was very unusual for a pre-med, the other student volunteers there were psych. majors. She also had some short term (summer) volunteering at in-patient psych facility while at college, I do not know if this is considered clinical or not. Later, her hotline volunteering was the second most common topic of conversations during her medical school interviews. The most common was her interest and minor in Music. Both show that pursuing your own interested while others around you doing something else, will pay off at the end.
If you are concerned, why would not you volunteer at the hospital? Volunteering positions are usually filled quickly. If you want to volunteer in a summer, you better start looking sometime in February.
Nobody expects any number of credits from pre-meds. It was just an example to show that academic load in the first 2 years should be heavier than in the last 2 years because of preparation for the MCAT in the junior year and medical school interviews in the senior year. D. also had AP credit but I do not remember how many. She had 18-19 hours in the first 2 years because she had 2 minors. She always had many unrelated interests and decided to pursue couple pf them at college as minors . This was her personal decision which had absolutely nothing to do with the medical school. You simply need to fulfill the requirements of your major and the medical school pre-reqs. If you are not fulfilling requirements of your minor (if any), you can simply drop it, my D. had done it with one of her minors.