Fellow oldtimers -
I am an army officer who’s finally calling it quits in favor of a medical career. I started 10 years ago and did horribly - but thankfully I didn’t continue past o-chem I. With everything together, the BCPM is around a 2.1. I started to retake the courses through a distance program with NC State to start preparing for the MCAT and was accepted to University of Maryland’s Science in the Evening program so I can work and study (and not worry about a third deployment to Afghanistan/Iraq!!).
With an overall undergrad GPA of 2.49, a graduate overall GPA of 3.58 (non-science, two masters total this May), I am just hoping that I can get things into order. I’m tempted to just apply to the six-year programs in Ireland - but who knows. What do you guys think?
Oh yeah, and while I’m not old at 28, after my life experiences, I certainly feel that way sometimes. 
Hiya,
What do you do in the Army? I’m ex-Army (enlisted) myself, 2 different times - once as a linguist (interrogator, but I ended up a translator/interpreter/liaison, for all practical purposes) and once as a special forces medic.
Good luck with coming back into the med school path, I think that’s great. You thinking of staying in the military and/or doing the AMEDD thing to pay for it?
Sam
If I were you, I’d be hitting up the plethera of financial aid available to millitary folk and ex-folk so fast the frowning overworked lady at the front desk’s head would spin.
You guys have got it great when it comes to recieving financial help for school!
To both of you, thank you for your service to our country. 
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If I were you, I’d be hitting up the plethera of financial aid available to millitary folk and ex-folk so fast the frowning overworked lady at the front desk’s head would spin.
You guys have got it great when it comes to recieving financial help for school!
To both of you, thank you for your service to our country.
LOL, frowning overworked lady… I seem to run into a lot of those.
The financial aid programs I know of are:
1. AMEDD (basically in the reserves while in school, 100% tuition, books and a stipend as an 0-1 if you aren’t already an officer), then automatic commission to O-3, most likely residency as active duty, and 1:1 payback after that for the tuition years.
2. Going guard/reserves (they have different programs, guard varies from state to state, nothing that would completely cover tuition though at most med schools),
3. Active Duty at the uniformed health services school
4. Using Education Bill money if you are getting out and have that available. Definitely nowhere near enough to fully cover med school, but would be at least a help.
Do you know of any programs other than that? Just curious if there’s something I might be missing on this subject. Sorry if I’m hijacking this introductory thread, but it seems kind of appropriate. I can move it to another one otherwise.
Sam
My brother is an ex-navy guy and finishing undergrad work for a business degree. He put in 8 years of service. I’ll ask what it is, but his tuition is paid for and they give him some extra monies, I think $1200 a month, to use towards school expenses.
As for med school, I’m not sure about that. I know they’ll pay for it if you promise to give them X number of years after as a doctor, but you’re in service as you go to school. I looked into it and was very interested in it, but with a husband and other things, millitary life would not be fair. Not having a loan to pay off would be nice, but medical school will be hard enough on the poor guy-nevermind all of the moving around and most likely being sent overseas. He’s surely starve to death since he can burn water 
I think that what your brother received was the GI Bill plus the college fund…that is what I got and sounds about the same…
Yep, my brother is ex-navy also (6 yrs - he’s 26 now). He saved a lot of his pay in the service (he was a nuke), and also gets the GI bill. Since he’s also an IL resident, he qualifies for the IL Veteran’s grant. He now sees school as his job - it’s what he’s getting paid for!
http://www.airforce.com/education/healthcare/moneyForSchool.php
http://www.goarmy.com/amedd/benefits.jsp
http://www.salliemae.com/apply/borrowing/medloans.html
Above are links to army and airforce sites the detail them paying for a US med school and you replay for service.
My frined in NYC just went to a saturday afternoon presentation by the army. they had a speaker that used the used the program. My firned asked the speaker specifics and she said, i quote,
That you do 3-4 weeks every summer while u r in med school of service which could be anywhere in the world and you cna opt for immunizations in some foreign country (dont know if its for the poor public abroad or for GI men and the families abroad)
-when u graduate, you repay each yr you received money for a year of service. which starts in the military after wherever you do ur residency. (you have to minimally sign up for 2yrs of med school being paid for ).
all dr’s start at $160k /yr and u get 2 yerly bonuses of 15k each so u total yearly $190k which is tax free. thats great deal. altho i dont know what a typical dr start at and what you bring home after taxes. but 190 tax free is greeat. the speaker said its an arrangemnt with the IRS that its tax free forthe Drs. also, when you work you work 3 12 hr shifts a week and then you have access to flight privileges and can sign up to travel for pleasure on ur off days by using military transports.
-also if you r done with clinical med for a while you can tell them u want to do research and in what and they show you whats available and you can go do that at the same salary and then if you wan to change to teaching you can do that and keep the same salary. also they said you can be asked to be placed virtually anywhere in the world (i dont know how frequently u can do this while u repay and i dont know how it compares to bouncing around the world in the private sector with ur MD degree, but it’d be a cool way to c the world) and they pay for moving costs and also for malpractice insurance.
- also, when the time comes when ur repayment ends you can opt for a cheap interest rate govt loan b4 u get out to help you start a practice if thats what u want,
-thay can also help give u I think 28k /yr and housing $/mo for you in ur residency wherever you do it cuz as a resident u make peanuts but hav adult living expenses and need money and m ost residents do take out living expense laons to help cover living costs while in residency in addition to their low salary as cheap labor. if u opt for residency tuition from the army then i belive the 1st yr or tuuition comes with a 2 yr payback and each subsequent yr comes with a 1:1 yr payback (with a 2 yr tuition scholarship sign on minimum)
this all sounds great. especially since I didnt nknow b4 this that if i did this program then my yrs of service army Dr salary would be at a drastically less than a private sector new grad Dr. But it seems it may not be. also, if while you r repaying your service you want to get another degree you can get one and if you want they can pay for it and thene you do another yr of service.
-finally, if while you are working as an army dr repaying your service u r not on active duty, however if ur name comes up in the lottery it would only come up once and would be for 4-6 months of service somewhere as an active military dr.
if anybody can correct these statements or add to them or clarify please do. sorry for the typos I just got in from my 10hr shift in the ED and its 145 am and I am tired.
here's a copy of the recruiters email she forwarded me. the guys email addy is in - contact him
Future Physicians, Future Dentists don’t wonder any longer…. BE THERE!
Saturday, February 25, 2006
10:30am-12:00pm and 12:00pm- 1:00pm
Lucerne Hotel
Geneva Room
201 West 79th Street
New York, NY 10024
You are cordially invited to attend a free scholarship/career information briefing in your area. Learn more about the Army Medical Department’s Health Professions Scholarship Program and what it’s really like to be an Army Physician or Dentist. Spouses, parents and family members, educators and significant others associated with students are also welcome to attend. Current scholarship recipients have been invited and can share their personal experiences with the program. Refreshments will be served.
Guest speakers scheduled to attend:
Colonel Jeffrey E. Short M.D. MPH,
Emergency Medicine Physician and Flight Surgeon
Graduate, Harvard School of Public Health 1997
Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth O. Wynn DDS
United States Military Academy, West Point, NY
You will benefit from attending this Health Professions Scholarship and Career enhancement briefing whether you are searching for a way to finance your medical or dental education or, you are merely curious as to the role of health care professionals in the military.
To learn more about how the Army Medical Department can enhance your career as an officer, health care professional and a leader or simply help you avoid a large debt looming over you for 10 to 15 years, BE THERE! Attend this unprecedented event. Convenient and confidential selection interviews are also available by appointment.
Please RSVP by email February 22nd to:
Staff Sergeant Brandon Butcher
U.S Army Health Care Counselor
brandon.butcher@usarec.army.mil
For more information regarding our programs visit us at the world wide web at: http://www.goarmy.com/amedd/index.jsp
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finally, if while you are working as an army dr repaying your service u r not on active duty, however if ur name comes up in the lottery it would only come up once and would be for 4-6 months of service somewhere as an active military dr.
This is NOT true. I personally know two family docs who are both on their second deployment to Iraq. As they are small town docs, this is a hardship not only on them, but on the entire community.
Although, I think the military does provide fantastic options, take what the recruiters tell you with a grain of salt. It is their job to sell you and they will always tell you all the great and wonderful things without mentioning the downsides. I think there has been a thread on here dealing with military med, and there have been several threads on SDN.
Yeah, that salary is total bull$hit too, Charlie. Sorry, but that recruiter is blabbing their usual line of crap. They really piss me off when they do that. The salary for any grade depends on your years in, but for someone who comes in fresh, who would then be an 0-3 w/4 years in, the salary would be around 75-80k, last time I checked. Of course then you get family and housing allowances, and it’s true, there are some bonuses they kick in, which I believe vary with specialty too, but are around 10k - 15k ea as well.
To give the Army credit, they are really trying to make their physician’s salaries comparable to what maybe a family practicioner would make on the outside, to try and keep their doctors in. The reinlistment bonuses are very good too; but that 160k figure is the typical horse$hit they give you when they calculate in everything, including the money you are gaining by breathing oxygen that is on their bases, which would otherwise cost you, blah, blah, blah.
At any rate, as a resident, you can actually make a lot closer to a real salary than you would as a civilian resident, which is nice, and the experience is probably awesome.
The active duty during summer, during school would be a welcome relief to me, as well as a chance to make active duty pay instead of making basically nothing, and the medical corps in the military is a complete country club compared to the military that I was in, so I personally have no problem at all with the concept, but that is certainly not the case with everyone.
However, as Amy said, that whole lottery thing is complete BS as well. If you are in the military, you should make the conscious and informed decision based on the fact that you will see combat and hardship to both yourself and your family. Anything less is a bonus, but if you go in with the mindset that you are getting a great ride with no payback, you’ll be sorely dissapointed. The best training, schools and experiences of my life were through the military, but there were many aspects of it that downright sucked ass too. It’s definitely a double-edged sword, so don’t lose yourself to a recruiter’s blathering…they’re making quota, and nothing else. Make sure you’re totally informed if you’re going to do it, as you’ll be spending at least 8 years in active duty, and that’s a long time to be pissed off at a decision you made, thinking it would be different.
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also, when you work you work 3 12 hr shifts a week and then you have access to flight privileges and can sign up to travel for pleasure on ur off days by using military transports.
-thay can also help give u I think 28k /yr and housing $/mo for you in ur residency wherever you do it cuz as a resident u make peanuts but hav adult living expenses and need money and m ost residents do take out living expense laons to help cover living costs while in residency in addition to their low salary as cheap labor. if u opt for residency tuition from the army then i belive the 1st yr or tuuition comes with a 2 yr payback and each subsequent yr comes with a 1:1 yr payback (with a 2 yr tuition scholarship sign on minimum)
Just a couple other things, because this honestly doesn’t make any sense to me, what this recruiter is saying. First of all, a lot of Army medical work is shift work, it’s true, but like anything else in the Army, there are going to be plenty of times where you are on-call and working a lot more than 3 12’s a week, if that’s even true as any kind of standard to begin with (which I doubt, just based on my experiences over about 11 years in the Army).
Secondly, you should be active duty while doing your residency, in about 98% of the cases. They have a match program of their own and you are required to take the military match. If you don’t get any, then you may take a civilian one I believe, but you are basically making active duty pay and working in a military hospital throughout your residency, so I’m not sure where that 28k/year thing comes in, unless it’s maybe if you don’t get a military residency match?
Anyway, not to harp on this but it just sounds like there may have been quite a bit of misinformation given out by that recruiter (gee, what a surprise). It’s still a great deal for someone like me though, and I am seriously considering it. By the time I got done with paying them back for my 4 - 7 years (if I do a dual), I’d be practically able to retire and have that backup income while working in a civilian practice. Plus, one specialty that is way up on my list of choices once I get to that point, is surgery - specifically trauma related. Either that or PM & R, and the Army is a great place for both of those.
Oh, one other thing - there are a limited set of specialties you can pursue through the AMEDD program. Make sure and check that out first if you already have your heart set on a specialty, as if that speciality is not on their list, you are out of luck.
Sam
I agree with SamMed. Those salary figures are definitely incorrect and are more in line with those that he gave. They also may be figuring in the malpractice that is covered, the lack of office staff overhead and the personal benefits like medical insurance. Also, the “extra” that they were referring to for housing is your housing allowance and varies based on the zip code where you are stationed and is tax free.
I will be taking a significant pay cut to be a neurologist in the military, but I come from very humble beginnings, so $100k is far more than anything I ever imagined myself making. I also miss being in the military, so the “pay cut” is something I am willing to deal with.
Also, I don’t know about the Army, but AF ADTs are done at stateside medical centers. When you are done your residency, it is possible to be stationed throughout the world, depending on your specialty and if that medical center has that specialty there. Also, when serving you payback time, you are on active duty and belong to Uncle Sam, free to be deployed as the needs of the military dictate.
For residency, there are active duty and civilan deferred positions. However, note with the Army and Navy, they have enough positions for their incoming residents, so realtively few people get deferred. The Air Force is slightly different with about 50% of their positions deferred. Also, when applying for residency, there are a limited number of positions each year per specialty. If you are not selected for the board in your specialty of choice, then you have a couple of options- 1) do an internship, servce as a GMO, get out, and reapply as a civilian in your specialty of choice or 2) do an internship, serve as a GMO, and reapply for military positions with more service credit.
Hope this helps dispell some myths.
Tara
So if you get a deferred residency, say, in the Air Force, are you still Active Duty while in residency, like you are if you are pulling a military residency? Or do you continue on in the reserves the way it was during school? Maybe this is where that 28K figure is coming from?
Sam
For the next four years while I am completing my deferred residency, I am just a name in the military books (kind of like now for HPSP) as a member of the Obligate Inactive Reserve (a special category I had never heard of before med school). I have no obligations to them until after I complete my residency (I received a full deferrment). However, unlike HPSP in med school, I will receive no stipend from them and do not receive any types of reimbursements (i.e. for books or exams).
Tara
Tara, you’ve said before - and I think it’s worth repeating - that anyone considering the military needs to WANT to serve in the Armed Forces. No one should ever consider it as a nifty way to get the $$$ for med school because the potential price is very, very high.
Mary
Hi there,
My best friend from medical school was a graduate of West Point. While on active duty, she served in Operation Desert Storm and worked in O & L at the Pentagon. She went into the reserves with the rank of major when she started medical school and remained in the reserves until graduation when she accepted an armed forces residency in surgery. About six months into her residency, she was pulled out and sent to Iraq (she is fluent in Arabic and Farsi) because she was more valuable to the military with her pre-medical school skills than with her medical training. She spent three years in Iraq and is now stateside doing another residency (with even more rank) having had to give up on General Surgery.
In short, the armed forces is a great way to practice medicine. My father and uncle were Army Air Corps and Navy respectively with medical school completely paid for but one served in WWII and the other was a batallion surgeon in Korea. While both always applauded the experiences that they gained in the armed forces, they also remember that it was a hardship being overseas and away from family.
Always remember that armed forces medicine begins with “armed” but it is a great way of life for many people and can be a great experience. I am still considering Army Reserve once I am done with residency (in the 22nd century).
Natalie
That’s interesting, and doesn’t surprise me. However, the current “word” is that (at least through the AMEDD program) a person is non-deployable until finished with both school and residency, in the Army. I know the Navy is different, and am not sure about the Air Force.
On the other hand, regardless of what I have been told or read, until you read the fine print in the contract, you really don’t know what the details are. It is quite likely that “non-deployable” only reflects the current needs of the Army, and if there were a national emergency, or (God forbid) another situation where a semi-literate commander in chief feels it necessary to create an illusion which is gobbled up by an undereducated national public and invade a sovereign nation which he has no chance whatsoever of actually changing in the long run through such methods of overt force and violence (oh I’m sorry, I think my politics are showing ), then it is quite likely that “non-deployable” could change to mean “deployable until this situation is under control.”
So the moral of the story is to make sure you do read the fine print and know what exactly you are getting into, in the case of a worst-case scenario. That all being said, I have found that the Army is pretty serious, when they invest money in you for some type of education, about making sure you get that education done so you can work for them in that field. Being a physician is something they consider about as high on the general list of important jobs (Persian and Farsi linguist in the recent past notwithstanding, evidently) as it gets. Their age waivers in both active duty and national guard for physicians is good proof of this as well.
Sam
Dukboki,
Thanks for the service and as a fellow vet, I can tell you that one advantage you have is that you know anything is possible. If the military taught me one thing, it was that what I expected of myself was less than what I was actually capable of. So you are ahead of the game. My wife and I recently met a marine who is going through your same exercise - he is going to take early retirement as a Lt. Colonel and coach high school football - his lifelong dream.
Your felt age is due to experience and this will serve you very well. I gotta tell a story related to this so non-military folk will understand that at age 19 or 20 or 22 one can be in charge of millions of dollars of stuff and many men - heady stuff for a young person.
Anyway, one of my best friend’s daughters just got married to an air force academy grad who was picked for the very first squadron of Vf22 Raptors out of Langley. So this young man takes a commercial plane to McDonnel Douglas in California to pick up his aircraft and some mechanic walks up to him and says “Are you Capt Smith?” He replied, “yes”. The mechanic shoved a clipboard into his chest and said, “good - sign here”. The young 22 year old captain took the clipboard and looked at it and there was an INVOICE on it from McD to the Air Force for $122,688,411.19 cents!!! He started thinking that HE was buying it. He said it was just like buying a car - the mechanic took him through the aircraft before they pulled it onto the runway and he flew it back to Virginia.
Most 22 year olds I would trust to mow my lawn. Yet, we trust them with a $123 million dollar aircraft. This builds in thos of us who experience it, a confidence and demeanor that serves us well the rest of our lives.
All this nonsense to say that you will do fine and don’t quit and eventually we’ll all become doctors and then congress will mandate national health care and we’ll all make $24,000 per year!
Blessings,
Jeffc