This question was originally asked on Reddit. I'm 29 years old and have an okay career as an embedded software engineer. I make around 70k right now and hope I can make around 85k in the next few years. I have no student debt. I actually have no debt at all. My net worth is around 50k currently. I'm not that satisfied with my career, personally or financially. I'm considering going back to school to study medicine. I already have a B.S. degree but I don't know if that would be enough to get into a medical program. Would I be insane to take out 100k, or even 200k in student loan debt to become a doctor? I know this is an okay gamble for younger people, but I wouldn't graduate until age 34ish or get out of residency until age 38ish. Is this too old? Am I better just continuing my current engineering career? Answered by a Reddit member: Medicine is my first career, but I went to med school with several people who were doing it as a second career. It would be very hard for me to recommend going back through med school, internship and residency unless medicine/health care is a strong passion. It is an extraordinary sacrifice, not just in terms of sleep and losing a very large portion of your 30s if you do so, but also the demands of job itself once you're practicing. The first thing I would recommend, if you haven't already done so, is volunteer to do something medical in your area. You can run supplies in the ED, check in patients, shadow MDs, etc. It would be very advantageous for your application, but also give you exposure to the field. Many medical schools have different academic requirements. It has been awhile since I sat on an admissions panel, but obviously biology and chemistry are required. I think they've done away with calculus. Go here: https://services.aamc.org/postbac/ to look for a postbac program (usually 1-2 years and earns a masters degree) that are designed specifically to help meet the admission requirements for those who didn't focus on the requirements in undergrad. Most of the required classes need to be taken within a certain time frame as well. I think the experience of people doing medicine as a 2nd career varied amongst my friends. My general impression was that people that had previous careers were much more assertive during the beginning of med school. They generally had families, so were a bit less social and, overall, fairly well rounded. Our class president was 31 when she started. I think 34 was the oldest in our class (at starting) that made it through to graduation. We had one older but she dropped out. It can be difficult to give up a career making good money to go back to paying to work for 80hrs per week and be treated fairly rough at times. The rules and guidelines are getting more stringent on how much a med student can be worked, but it's still rough. The loans are a tough issue. Costs for schools vary greatly, but I went to a public school in CA and I ended with just under $200k in loans. I've been making payments, but it will mostly likely take 20+ years to pay off. I remember thinking it wouldn't be a problem since I'd be making so much as an MD, but reality gets in the way of that happening pretty quickly. Financially, if you work until you're 65, that's another 36 years. So, using very shitty math and a quick calculation: If you continue at your work and receive a conservative 1% raise each year, you would earn a total of $3,015,381.49 over the next 36 years. If you went to med school, depending on the length of your residency and whether you do a fellowship (many residencies are 3 years long which would lead you to a primary care position), you would likely graduate 10 years from now (1 year post-bac, 1 year application cycle, 4 years of medicine, 3-4 years of residency). Depending on what you choose to do, your salary could vary immensely. Most of the 3 year residencies such as pediatricians and family practice start off in the $120k-130k, while some of the more specialized (longer residencies) start in the $200-300K range. The average for many of my friends is in the 140-180k range. So, estimating that you make roughly 50k through residency and then start at 160K, you would have earned $5,126,342.05 by the time you turn 65. You'd be taxed at a much higher rate obviously and have $200K in loans as well. A very rough estimate of taxes, would still give you a greater take home of 1.4 million. Would that make up for 10 years of lost or greatly reduced retirement contributions? It's difficult for me to say as I'm now finishing my glass of wine. Loans can also be forgiven after 10 years with the public service forgiveness option. Most hospitals would qualify you for this, even private ones such as Kaiser, but you wold still be paying back approximately 120K during that ten years. This may have gotten long winded, but I think it really depends on having the right reasons to do it if you're going to go back. I think, financially, you could make it work, but only if you're okay with delaying many things for the next decade of your life. I would never enthusiastically encourage anyone to go to med school (and many doctors feel the same way), but I would never tell someone not to go either (unless they're doing it for a shitty reason, like to make someone else happy). There are a lot of other factors as well to think about such as moving away to med school. Moving away to residency. Moving away to start your career. I've been lucky to stay in northern Ca for my career, but many of my colleagues have moved many times. You have some degree of control, but getting into school is very tough, especially as a non-traditional student so you may have to expand where you are willing to move to. Residency is done by a computer "match" and you don't know 100% where you will end up. If I had to do med school all over again, I would. If I had to start at age 29...I really don't think I'd have the energy to do it, but many people do. Source
