Hello everyone! I’m not necessarily new to the website, but definitely new to posting things. I have been in an uphill battle with the decision to reapply to medical school since graduating with my MPH back in 2006. I only applied once and was wait-listed for DO school, but did not get in anywhere.
A few years later, I’m obtaining my MSN and considering NP school next Fall, but deep down inside, and with the irony of physicians I work for imploring me to pursue medical school, I know that I should be applying to medical school no later than 2013.
Still I have my questions and concerns and it seems as if no one can give me a straight answer- not like I expect one, but it’d be nice. With this MSN program and my first MPH, I’ll have loans of roughly $110,000 already riding me. Tack on medical school, I’ll be up in $300k…easily. How the hell can I get married? How can I pay rent while trying to follow my dreams of medicine? It seems as if it would be almost impossible to accomplish.
Any suggestions, experiences, or just straight up advice would be most welcomed.
Marioc - I’m not sure about the getting married. But my school’s tuition is $58,000/yr and estimated living expenses is about $20,000 (including books), which means I’m borrowing 78,000/yr X4 = 312,000.
There are some schools which are far less expensive where cost of attending PLUS living might be more like 55,000/yr so you might finish with similar debt.
I’m thinking about applying to be a teaching assistant next year (don’t get too excited yet, Pixie!). It would require me to take an extra year to finish 3rd year (6 months clinical, 6 months teaching, 2 years in a row), but I’d get free tuition for my last 2/3 years (but still have to borrow living expenses for 3 years). I figure it would save me almost $100,000 in debt.
Some of my classmates are married and have a spouse who works enough to pay their own living expenses, then they go ahead and borrow the usual “projected living expenses” and tuition for themselves.
Other married classmates are in school on the military scholarship which pays tuition and books and a small salary.
When you are finished school and trying to pay off your 300,000 + dollar debt, you can apply for
“income-based repayment”, which cannot charge you more than I think 20% of your net, or use the government’s schedule which is about $3000 - $3500/month (if you are up there like I might be)…which is actually doable AFTER residency on a usual physician salary, for someone who is single. I plan on applying for income-based repayment while I am in residency (when the salaries are much lower).
Hope that gives you some idea --it’s only the info I’ve collected so YMMV.
Kate
- MarioC_RN Said:
So when you say "first MPH", does that mean you have 2 MPH's?
I guess my other question is, if you knew deep down inside you wanted to be a physician, why did you get an MPH (or 2?) and an MSN, racking up more debt on graduate degrees that weren't going to achieve that end? Your money would have been better spent on a post-bac and/or SMP to make you more competitive for medical school. You were already an RN so you already had a marketable skill without the added expenses of an MPH (or 2?) and MSN. It seems you've backed yourself into a financial corner. As Kate429 detailed in her above post, medical school is very expensive even in the best case scenario.
Hello MarioC_RN! I am in a similar boat – but only one graduate degree. I am a pharmacist. And after four years of college and four of pharmacy school, I feel certain I have a calling towards medicine. But, I have about $90,000 in school debt (which isn’t terrible for 8 years of school, I think). I have not taken the MCAT, but while I study and do that, I am putting all the extra money I can toward my loans and financial planning for med school and not a fancy car or big house like some pharmacy friends of mine. While, doing that I am keeping my credit as golden as possible as that increases my loan prospects. Tuition costs are increasing every year for even undergrads, so even though I have a lot of debt, I am hoping to chip away at it and still be considered for financial aid. But really, any advice in this thread is welcome news to me too! Good luck!
So when you say “first MPH”, does that mean you have 2 MPH’s?
I guess my other question is, if you knew deep down inside you wanted to be a physician, why did you get an MPH (or 2?) and an MSN, racking up more debt on graduate degrees that weren’t going to achieve that end? Your money would have been better spent on a post-bac and/or SMP to make you more competitive for medical school. You were already an RN so you already had a marketable skill without the added expenses of an MPH (or 2?) and MSN. It seems you’ve backed yourself into a financial corner. As Kate429 detailed in her above post, medical school is very expensive even in the best case scenario.
The reason for the two Master's, one in Public Health the other in Nursing, was crappy advising...