<p>Hey, so this is my first post. Im a freshman in Texas just trying to figure out which path to medical school I should take. At the moment I'm leaning towards going straight through and getting my Biology B.S. and getting into med school pretty fast. But my friend is doing a Radiology Tech program that starts up next fall and is trying to convince me to do it also. So in doing this I would take an extra 2-3 years getting in to medical school but in the process I could work part time as a Rad Tech and start saving up for med school costs.
Each paths have their pros and cons like if I waited I would feel more mature, and have more general knowledge of anatomy and other things. But if I go straight in I could potential "save" 2-3 years of my life, not that they would be wasted if I waited but still.
Any opinions on this? Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>P.S. Sorry if I'm typing strange, I'm watching the World Series and am a bit distracted haha</p>
<p>In Economic terms – take an Econ class – it’s called Opportunity Cost. In other words, what Opportunity are you passing up (aka costing yourself) to go Rad Tech. Besides the additional cost of schooling(?), you are losing out on 2-3 years of a physician’s salary. Yes, you would be making money as a Rad Tech, so the opportunity cost is the lost differential of 3 years of an MD salary minus 3 years of Rad Tech.</p>
<p>There’s also the trap in having a decent income. </p>
<p>Many people, once they start working and start having the $$, begin to acquire things. ( Flatscreen TV, nicer apt, new car, disposable income to spend on meals out, skiing, travel, etc) They find it very difficult to give that lifestyle up and go back to living like a starving student. Or they’ve run up enough debt that it becomes impossible to go back and be a starving student.</p>
<p>Not saying that you’ll fall into either category, but it’s a pretty common outcome.</p>
<p>Yeah, I understand all that. Especially falling in to a comfortable lifestyle. It’s tempting to take the “easy way” and become a rad tech, 3 years of schooling and potentially making 50-60 thousand a year at the age of 21-22. But then again I want to challenge myself, and I want to make myself and everyone around me proud. I just want to make sure I wont regret the decision I make in 20, 30, or 40 years you know? But anyways, thanks for the advice!
Keep posting if anyone else has more input.</p>
<p>If the goal is med school and to be a doctor, why bother spending time/money/energy/effort/etc training to be something else (that is, a radiology tech)? I don’t know for sure, but it doesn’t seem like adding “radiology tech” to your CV would be that huge of a boost anyway.</p>
<p>A guy in my med school class used to be a rad tech. At the time when he decided to go rad tech, he didn’t have med school aspirations (“just” rad tech), so rad tech wasn’t his “back up plan” (which seems to be the case for you–I might be reading too far into your post though). The guy knows just enough to be dangerous–that is, he knows which bone of the arm is fractured by looking at a radiograph (for example), but doesn’t know the implications said broken bone has on nearby muscles, nerves, and vasculature–which is what happened to be important on our exams, testing clinical correlations of all that anatomy. So in the end, the “extra benefit” of his rad tech training wasn’t as much as he’d hoped, and as far as he can tell, he’s pretty much “used up” most of that advantage after the first few months.</p>
<p>Will you be like my classmate? Who knows. Just thought I’d offer a short anecdote about someone who took the path you’re proposing (for different reasons).</p>