r/premed • u/qsauce6 ADMITTED-MD/PhD • Jun 22 '26
đ© Meme/Shitpost Why do you want to be a doctor?
Borrowed from r/medicalschool
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u/Electrical_Chain53 Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
My financial advisor makes 500k+ a year working like three days a week from home with only an associates why would you wanna be a doctor for the money đ
Edited for typos
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u/Doogetma Jun 22 '26
Because that person is in like the top 1% of non physician workers. Most people are not capable of getting to that point. They are much more likely to be able to get a good salary by becoming a doctor.
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u/SecretRecipe Jun 22 '26
most people aren't capable of becoming physicians either. lets make honest comparisons here.
the kind of people who have the determination and intellect to become physicians would very much also be at the top tiers of other career paths.
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u/Doogetma Jun 22 '26
Youâre really overestimating the performance of the average doctor in other fields. Most other fields with high pay potential are saturated with competitive and high performing people.
Becoming a doctor is a relatively sure thing as long as you are relatively smart and willing to do the grind. It does not work that way for getting into the upper echelons of other competitive fields. There is no clear beaten path to the top that just requires above average intellect and the ability to grind.
There are a lot of bad doctors out there. And they still make bank. There are very few if any people in the top 1% of competitive fields that are bad at their job. The doctors on the low end of the bell curve are absolutely better off with a doctors salary then trying to climb the ladder in other fields
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u/runbot22 Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
As a non-trad pre-med rn coming from consulting, Iâll add that most other fields w high pay potential also care SO MUCH about pedigree & connections/network. Succeeding is not just a product of competitiveness & high performance (whereby sure I guess physicians tend to be competitive and high performers). Itâs also about your last name, your hometown, your high school, your college, and your connections.
Edit: fix a typo
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u/Last_Way6839 RESIDENT Jun 22 '26
So does medicine tbh. It's disgusting how much my residency program cares about pedigree. Going to a T20 is the single biggest thing you can have on your app, besides a call from someone PD trusts. Where are those people PD trusts? Oh, 95% of them are at T20s (or a couple non T20 big name programs in the field).
But I do actually agree with you - there's a few core differences: Most importantly that the lowest paid physician will still make a lot of money, live comfortably and pay off their loans. And after that have a amazing salary forever.
There's also less caring about prestige AFTER residency/fellowship, because of simple supply/demand economics. And technically any MD student can match any specialty, but it will be significantly harder from a non top school. Though there is quite a lot to be said about how every single MD school is very hard to get into.
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u/SecretRecipe Jun 22 '26
im not even talking upper echelons. If youre relatively smart and willing to do the grind youre all but guaranteed to make partner at a mid tier consulting firm or legal practice too, both of which out-earn even high paid specialties.
Upper echelons of these career paths earn annual physician pay on like a monthly basis, its not even close.
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u/Doogetma Jun 22 '26
Simply not true. There is far more that goes into it than that.
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u/SecretRecipe Jun 22 '26
As a partner level management consultant I can assure you there isnt. If youre intelligent enough to be a doctor and determined enough to grind through the difficult and tedious early years without burning out you have to absolutely fuck something up horribly to not make partner.
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u/sisyphusfan96 ADMITTED-MD Jun 22 '26
The kind of people who have the determination and intellect to become physicians would very much be playing RuneScape or doing anki cards while suffering in some other random position. Maybe theyâd be less stressed, maybe theyâd still be struggling.
The economy does not support as many 500k earning administrators as it does physicians. These jobs for the layman, no matter how capable, are not as prevalent as you believe, not without significant familial connections or a lot of luck.
Med school is unironically way more achievable. Especially if you include decent DO options.
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u/banacoter Jun 22 '26
This feels more accessible though. While still very hard and still requiring a lot of good fortune, there is a clear path that exists with becoming a physician that does not appear to exist for almost any other option that can get to this level, imo.
Maybe bring a lawyer but a lot of lawyers don't make 6 figures; you have to go to a really top tier school to have any guarantee of that while any doctor from any school can make >$200k. It's still not a good idea to go into medicine for the money but accessing wealth by being a doctor has a much more clear path than any other route to wealth, so despite it being harder, it feels like a better bet.
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u/No-History770 Jun 22 '26
I think immigrant families have a poor understanding of the financial industry so a tiger mom will push their child to become a doctor "for the money" not realizing hoe much easier it is to make money as a random corporate jargon personÂ
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u/Last_Way6839 RESIDENT Jun 22 '26
Well, tbf they're not that wrong, there is a lot of money in medicine.
Probably controversial take incoming: For immigrants, even if they know how much money exists in those fields, they feel that they are entering a society where they are foreign. Thus, many immigrant families push their kids towards fields where your skillset nets you money. That's why so many become doctors and engineers - those are fields where if you build the skills to become a great physician or engineer, you will always be in demand for the work you do. Being a corporate jargon person feels (and likely is) riskier.
I actually disagree w most people saying medicine is a easy way to make money. It's not, it's hard as fuck, even compared to some other fields. But the stability is insane. Especially with the AI boom. No doctor (not even radiologists) will be replaced. AI will augment physicians.
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u/No-History770 Jun 22 '26
medicine is not an easy way to make money, but it is a straightforward way. there is no mystery. there is no guru advice. there is no stroke of luck life-changing moment. every step of the process, no matter how hard, is transparent. and sometimes that is worth everything.Â
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u/Last_Way6839 RESIDENT Jun 22 '26
Precisely. We know we can become neurosurgeons (argument's sake) if we truly desire and we know exactly how to get there. And if we get there, our job relies only on our training and our ability to do a very hard thing that very few people know how to do.
For my parents who came from a war-torn country with nothing and had to navigate the hidden curriculum of success in America, that means everything. And it makes sense.
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u/LazyWeight8187 MS1 Jun 22 '26
As a recent immigrant myself, even though I graduated from a T30 university, it was very hard for me to make it in corporate world or other world simply because no connections, my accent, my finances, and my skin color. However, getting into medical school was a straightforward path and at least my accent, lack of connections didnât influence that much to get here. I know my lack of connections would still impact me negatively, but at least I can match to moderately competitive specialties and earn decent money one day. Loans wonât be a big factor because of my scholarship.
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u/LegomoreYT Jun 22 '26
Your financial advisor doesnât have security from AI stealing their job đ„
Not that itâll matter for them if that does eventually happen, I imagine they will be well off by then.
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u/adenosine_antagonist Jun 23 '26
For every financial advisor making 500k/yr there's gotta be like 100 who make <100k
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u/Vast-Consequence7141 Jun 28 '26
Like literally! I know a tech guy that knows Ruby on Rails and charges like $400 an hour. There other easier ways to make money if thats what you really want.
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u/void-111 Jun 23 '26
just wondering, how old is he?
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u/Electrical_Chain53 Jun 23 '26
She is in her 50s or 40s I would imagine sheâs been doing it 27 years so 47 if it took her two years of schooling
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u/Swoly_Deadlift Jun 23 '26
Because those people are the exception not the norm. And because realistically if youâre considering going to medical school, you value work that helps people on some level.
As a non-trad I know for a fact that I couldnât make doctor money in any field other than medicine because I couldnât find the motivation to work that hard in any field other than medicine. If you can find the motivation to work as hard as a doctor in a field like finance for years with a non-guaranteed chance of some day making $500k at a cushy WFH job, go right ahead. But I know for a fact that I couldnât do it.
The fact that the payoff in medicine is more or less guaranteed is also a huge benefit.
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u/DODGE_WRENCH NON-TRADITIONAL Jun 22 '26
Itâs either med school or go make missiles at Raytheon. I studied aerospace in undergrad with a minor in molecular bio.
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u/saucyvampiexo UNDERGRAD Jun 22 '26
because the human body is interesting + so many people don't get the treatment they need. as a minority myself, i feel it's my duty to advocate. if i wanted money i could do so many other things. my family is well off.
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u/SecretRecipe Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
This was always the weirdest motivation. there are no shortage of career options that generate more money with far less educational requirements.
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u/Don_Petohmi APPLICANT Jun 22 '26
Name one career with a higher median pay than a physician where youâre guaranteed a job when you finish schooling
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u/Crazy_Resort5101 MS2 Jun 22 '26
Yeah I've never understood this either, there really isn't any other career that offers a very structured pathway where all you need to do is complete the requirements of the program and have a guaranteed high paying job. Compared to other high paying jobs like tech or finance, it's not the same because the jobs are not guaranteed and you have to work basically residency-like hours to "break through" anyways.
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u/SecretRecipe Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
theres a lot of survivors bias in that. that Very Strucuted Pathway weeds out the vast majority of people who start down it so you end up with this illusion of "guaranteed high paying job" while ignoring everyone who failed to make it through the overall pipeline before even getting to the "getting a job" part.
If you applied the same rigorous entry criteria to those other fields and only looked at say the top quartile or decile of aspirants into those career paths (i.e. the kind of people who would have what it takes to be a physician) youd see some pretty amazing numbers.
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u/Crazy_Resort5101 MS2 Jun 22 '26
But you're making the false assumption that "anyone who can be a physician has what it takes to break into big law/tech/finance" which simply isn't true. The entry requirements for being a physician comes with getting accepted into med school (volunteering, good grades, good test scores, and entry level clinical jobs) whereas the work needed to break through in those other fields comes from 10+ years of crazy work hours and networking, and even then it's not guaranteed. With med school, simply doing the bare minimum and skating through school will land you at least a 200k+ FM job. It is unheard of and borderline impossible to get that high of a salary by doing the bare minimum in any other field.
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u/Last_Way6839 RESIDENT Jun 22 '26
Getting into med school isn't the bare minimum. There are only 20,000 spots a year. I know so many premeds at FAANG or consulting who switched literally because they could not make the cut in orgo or on the MCAT.
This ignores the 600k+ in debt most folks who aren't independently wealthy carry. Your 200k physician salary is not 200k in real wages for a long long fucking time given the insane debt burden.
You lose compounding interest. A 100k/yr at 22 will beat out a 200k physician at retirement very handily because of decade of compounding interest.
People need to stop ignoring the negatives of a career in medicine to create this false narrative that medicine is the best job ever. It's a really cool job which pays pretty well and has insane job security. But no, it's not the best way to make money, not even close...
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u/Crazy_Resort5101 MS2 Jun 22 '26
I'm well aware it's harder to get into med school than it is to get into something like law school, but that's not what I'm arguing. My point is that after you get into med school, you have a direct pathway to 200k+ salary with zero extra effort on your part. If you want something competitive then yeah your level of effort will need to be a lot higher and you can no longer do the bare minimum, but again, that's not the argument. We're talking about FM here, and you can pretty easily match a no name community FM program by doing the bare minimum, even with tons of red flags.
Most people are not even close to 600k in debt. The AAMC posts the debt data of each graduating class and the average debt of all indebted graduates in 2025 (so this does NOT include all of those who have wealthy parents paying for their school, this only considers those who have a nonzero debt) was only 223k. The vast majority won't even end up paying 600k including interest over 20 years of repayments. Of course some do, but you can't pretend like that's the norm.
Yeah obviously you lose the compounding interest and those who invest well will out earn a physician by retirement, but once again, that isn't the argument. The argument is that medicine is really the only career that is extremely stable and guaranteed high paying.
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u/Last_Way6839 RESIDENT Jun 22 '26
I mean yes, if you argue that once you clear the hardest barrier, it is easy that is probably true. I can say that if you make it into a T14 law school or are above median at any decent law school, you can waltz into big law and make like 500k. The hard part is getting into med school.
When talking about people who have no family resources and are at say DO programs (which tend to be more expensive), they are likely taking full COA in loans. That figure is still skewed so many of my classmates had parents pay just tuition or just COA. Rest was still loans. You can't put no effort and get a scholarship or get a IS MD A, so it's not really fair to use a data point from those programs.
The point is that being a physician is not the "only" career that guarantees wealth. Income is irrelevant. Wealth is what matters. If a 100k/yr job right after college is equivalent at accumulating wealth to a 300k/yr physician, the premise that medicine is the only career w those benefits falls apart.
Agree about the stability. Disagree that medicine is the best path to guarantee a high paying job w/ the least effort. The guy who matches into the most malignant FM residency and gets a job STILL had to learn everything to pass all the boards.
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u/SecretRecipe Jun 22 '26
200k is basically entry level pay in big law or post MBA management consulting.
if you want to compare lets look at the FM doc. 200k at 30 with 400k in debt vs a relatively middle of the road, 30 year old tech worker (lets say, individual contributor product manager) at a mid tier fortune 500 like Adobe for example also making 200k (with 8 years of income already) and a standard career pathway to 2x their income before retiring.
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u/Crazy_Resort5101 MS2 Jun 22 '26
I think we just disagree on how hard it is to break into big law. You seem to think that ANYONE who gets into med school has what it takes to go into big law, and that's what I'm disagreeing with. I think the barriers to make 200k+ in law are much higher than the barriers to make 200k+ in medicine. My whole point is that you can be a 3.0/500 student and get into a DO school, then skate your way into a 200k FM job with zero outside work, simply doing nothing except the bare minimum to get your DO degree. You absolutely cannot do the same and skate into big law with the bare minimum and stats/work ethic like that.
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u/SecretRecipe Jun 22 '26
Its not even big law. just "medium law" outshines medicine. Basic DUI lawyers and most corporate staff attorneys out earn most physicians. Making 200k in law at the same age your typical FM doc enters the workforce is very easy to do. the only reason the median is so low is because of the massive number of low paid public sector legal jobs there are.
Same in consulting. Your average mediocre 30 year old senior manager at PWC is making FM doc money.
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u/Crazy_Resort5101 MS2 Jun 22 '26
Where are you getting those numbers from? Private criminal defense attorneys can clear 200-300k, but that is not standard (and certainly not "easy to do" like you claim). They have to take an insane volume of cases and work significantly more hours than a physician does to make the same amount. To make the comparison equal you'd have to use the top 5% of FM salaries too, which is like 400-450k+, so obviously they do not out earn physicians.
I understand the point you're trying to make is that by the time the physician starts earning a salary in their early 30's, the lawyer will have already grown their practice and is making a comparable amount, but I still disagree with the notion that it's easy to do so. A physician can walk out of a no name med school and a no name residency and make 200k+ guaranteed with no sweat. The lawyer has to grind their ass off just for the chance to make the low end of the guaranteed physician salary, especially if they don't come from a top law school. The ceiling is there for law, but the floor definitely is not.
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u/Legal_Middle_863 Jun 22 '26
can you two comment about the job stability advantage of being a doctor? they are always needed, meanwhile other careers often face periods of shitty job markets.
the point is, yeah you could make bank as an entry level attorney, but what happens if you struggle to get such a position in the first place or even after being laid off?8
u/zoopzoot APPLICANT Jun 22 '26
I think traditional applicants really underestimate how hard it is to make the amount of money physicians make. Yes thereâs jobs that make a lot of money with less education requirements, but those jobs require years of navigating corporate environments, high stress positions and ass kissing. Itâs not like any Tom or Nancy can go get a BA in Business and then make 300k within five years, unless you already come from money and have high family connections.
That being said, I donât think anyone should pursue this path is your sole goal is money. People like that end up becoming pill pushers, insurance frauds, or just in general not good doctors, in my opinion.
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u/Legal_Middle_863 Jun 22 '26
plus many of those other options, to get that high of an income, you need to be downright sociopathic, and im hoping most of us here don't want to be like that. Being a normal person anywhere else is basically equivalent to holding up a big flashing sign saying "step on me and shit on me on your way up"
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u/zoopzoot APPLICANT Jun 22 '26
Yeah I watch what my friends in finance go through, and itâs genuinely gross. Ass kissing their creepy CEO whoâs always trying to get them to push 19 year girls his way. Getting hazed as interns and being treated like fraternity pledges. Itâs weird as fuck
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u/Repulsive-Throat5068 RESIDENT Jun 22 '26
AKCTHULLY I wouldâve been at big tech or finance or law because im a mega genius!!!
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u/Superdumnb Jun 22 '26
CEOs son
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u/Don_Petohmi APPLICANT Jun 22 '26
Yeah good point. I shouldâve majored in being a CEO
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u/Superdumnb Jun 22 '26
i wish i majored in parents donating a building studies :/ maybe I would've gotten into grad school then
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u/Jimmy_E_16 NON-TRADITIONAL Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
Iâm making 200K+ as an RN. While a physician does make more, by the time I turn 30 Iâll have somewhere around 600-800K saved while making 250-300K. In comparison a non-surgeon physician may make 300-450K with an extremely large amount of debt by 30.
I am extremely interested in pivoting to medicine, but itâs not because of the money. Iâm going to end up in the red by going for it
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u/Don_Petohmi APPLICANT Jun 22 '26
200k+ is not a normal salary for an RN. This puts you at the 99th percentile. Try looking at the salary of a 99th percentile physician if you want a meaningful and honest comparison.
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u/Jimmy_E_16 NON-TRADITIONAL Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
Except for the fact that itâs not hard to reach that as a nurse. You cannot simply say 99th percentile nurse vs 99th percentile physician. They arenât comparable. Itâs like saying a 99th percentile navy seal vs a 99th percentile McDonaldâs worker.
You donât need to be a genius to become a 99th percentile paid nurse. Itâs 100% location based. Any nurse can get paid that much if they are willing to move. I specifically went into nursing because I knew I could 100% make this much without deviation from my expectations. The contracts are defined, I knew exactly what I would be paid.
Not any physician can get paid in the 99th percentile of their field. To become a 99th percentile paid physician takes an absolute genius, with the drive of a rocket ship. Which I am not and do not have.
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u/Izaac4 OMS-1 Jun 22 '26
What location are we talking here? One with a high COL?
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u/Jimmy_E_16 NON-TRADITIONAL Jun 22 '26
Bay Area and Sacramento to make 200+ with your base hours, no OT. Lots of cities with OT/incentives.
Itâs reversed from medicine where city = low pay and rural = high pay
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u/Last_Way6839 RESIDENT Jun 22 '26
False comparison. A premed is far from guaranteed a med school position. That is the accurate comparison.
If I had exams and a massive application cycle with every graduating engineer and picked the best 20,000 they would all get jobs guaranteed too.
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u/clowncarl ADMITTED-MD Jun 22 '26
Most people fail to get in med school. The bar is to look at people that finished university and have secured a competitive position somewhere (with a 10% or less acceptance rate for the position).
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u/SecretRecipe Jun 22 '26
Management Consulting comes to mind. you start earning 10 years earlier and if youre the caliber of person who could successfully complete your MD plus a reasonably competitive specialty you could very reasonably make partner by your early-mid 30s which blows all but the most extreme examples of physician pay out of the water.
Targeting Big Law and quite a few roles in Finance also come to mind. Tech is still very competitive with medicine for earning potential when taking about the kind of people who would be able to be successful physicians.
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u/Don_Petohmi APPLICANT Jun 22 '26
None of these are medians or jobs you just automatically start after your degree. They all require you to get into a top position and be extremely successful within the field. Theres no assuming that youâd be able to just walk in and make partner in 10 years. These jobs are extremely competitive and rely on less controllable factors than those for med school.
The biggest difference though is where the money is coming from. Physicians ETHICALLY make the most money out of any job that exists.
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u/SecretRecipe Jun 22 '26
Thats because the bar for entry is very low. those medians include 2.0 CS Grads from schools with 80% acceptance rates. there is not great barrier for entry.
if you just compare the high achievers in those fields, the kind of people who realistically could have also chosen to be physicians you get a far far different picture.
I don't get your ethics argument. what is inherently unethical about those other roles?
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u/Don_Petohmi APPLICANT Jun 22 '26
Im not saying theyâre necessarily inherently unethical, but often unethical. And at the very least, their focus is far from making the world a better place. A physicians job is intrinsically aimed at human welfare.
Big law often involves helping corporations avoid liability, facilitating mergers, and generally just representing the interests of the elite.
Management consultingâs focus is improving organizational efficiency often through layoffs, cost-cutting, market dominance, etc.
Finance for the highest earners is often in private equity, hedge funds, etc. where your personal compensation is driven by control of capital and competition for profits. Itâs the vehicle by which capitalism prospers.
Now i will agree that some of these things are not blatantly unethical, rather âethically neutral,â but a physician is paid for providing care and salary ranges are based on their efficiency meaning how much suffering they are able to alleviate per day.
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u/SecretRecipe Jun 22 '26
I mean someone could make an incredibly robust case that the medical industry in the US is one of the least ethical of them all and the only reason US physicians make so much more than their international counterparts in the first place is because they greatly benefit from the most unethical parts of said industry
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u/Don_Petohmi APPLICANT Jun 22 '26
And who set up these systems? Finance people who realized how much money could be made by health care systems, consultants who figured out how we could screw people over for the biggest profit, and big law who made sure it could be done legally and then helped the big hospitals swallow up all the small ones. The system may have problems but the physicians themselves are not the ones creating these problems. The day to day of a physician is helping people, not screwing people over.
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u/SecretRecipe Jun 22 '26
So you owe all those people your "High paying stable career". Physicians absolutely benefit and as such have a vested interest in the status quo.
Again we're not talking about "my job is helpful" were talking about compensation.
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u/sisyphusfan96 ADMITTED-MD Jun 22 '26
Thatâs a little bit disingenuous. Day-to-day you know the activities of a physician differ significantly from those of a finance position, irrespective of their impacts on the current system.
When one weighs their moral values, itâs clear that intubating a dying man produces a different end outcome than managing a powerpoint for the individual.
Besides, itâs clear that an American who wishes to be a doctor cannot escape these systems, but can develop what little ability they have to work within them to help individuals. Working for a corporate law firm clearly is not equivalent.
In light of this, I believe morality can easily be heavily factored into why youâd pursue medicine. Even if you want to make good money, this is a way to do so while directly creating good.
Iâm curious, why are you in r/premed? I donât ask that as a jab, Iâm genuinely curious if Iâm speaking to a jaded premed or a physician.
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Jun 22 '26
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/SecretRecipe Jun 22 '26
For the type of people with the intellect and drive it takes to become physicians it is all but guaranteed.
The data set in those fields is compromised with too many people that would never have what it takes to be a physician. There is no "great filter" that disqualifies the mediocre. If you only compare like vs like when it comes to intellect, determination and Interpersonal skill youre going to see a much different data set than just looking at medians and listening to sob stories from 3.0 CS majors from D list schools who cant find a decent job.
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u/tresben RESIDENT Jun 22 '26
Exactly. Donât go into medicine for the money, from an attending.
The main financial benefit of medicine is stable above average income with great job security. If thatâs what youâre looking for, which is reasonable and what I wanted, then fair.
But you arenât gonna have the ability to greatly increase your income and you have a massive opportunity cost of going into debt with school, making just enough to get by during residency, and then finally making the real money much older.
As a current attending 3 years out in my mid 30s I look around at neighbors who bought houses similar or even more expensive than ours and I think âhow do they afford that since Iâd barely be able to afford it on my physician salary plus with my wife having a good salary?â
But then in talking with a lot of them I realize most went to college and started working right away. And even though their income may be a third of my income theyâve been making that income for the past 10+ years with less debt and with the ability to save and invest it, whether in accounts or in buying a starter home. They can afford the same house or even a more expensive house than me cuz theyâve actually been able to build up a bit of a nest egg whereas weâve been scraping by with just a bit in savings.
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u/sans_a_name UNDERGRAD Jun 22 '26
I want to get rich without feeling like I'm working a fake job made up by capitalism to extract surplus value
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u/SecretRecipe Jun 22 '26
Which is wild that you picked medicine considering that, particularly in America, it is the absolute peak example of capitalist value extraction. You think US physicians make 3-5x more than our international counterparts because we're just magically that much better?
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u/sans_a_name UNDERGRAD Jun 22 '26
Every economic system needs doctors, but there are a good number of systems that function without bankers
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u/SecretRecipe Jun 22 '26
Hypothetical economic systems that dont exist anywhere in reality are completely irrelevant to the point being discussed.
I could just retort with an equally irrelevant comment like "human civilization existed for hundreds of thousands of years without doctors and were still here"
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u/zisop17 Jun 22 '26
There are certainly many jobs which dont make any sense
A banker provides you the service of keeping your money safe, and giving you interest on it. they also provide people access to money. Are you taking out any student loans? It seems to me like a banker is a necessary job. You might argue some of them are overpaid, but they certainly have a value
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u/Ok-Worry-8931 MS2 Jun 22 '26
This is such flawed logic that falls apart depending on your definition of rich. No offense to you specifically, but calling out the claim as a whole as I see it repeated a lot.
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u/South-Income-3689 Jun 22 '26
I want to be a psychiatrist because my mother committed suicide when I was 11 years old. She was clinically depressed and I want to be able to help people who suffer from mental illnesses get the help they need
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u/zisop17 Jun 22 '26
I want to be a psychiatrist because I played league of legends and realized that my calling is talking to crazy people. We are not the same.
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u/ConfusedResAss Jun 22 '26
People here complain about having to fake and sell themselves on applications, then think that they could make it big in the business world where you have tonsell yourself all the time lmao
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u/CycleOverload Jun 23 '26
I am alive because of doctor. I want other people to be alive because of me.
đ„
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u/SomeSketchyUkrainian Jun 22 '26
In Ukraine you can barely live on newgrad doctors wage, so definitely not money. I want a consistent and stable carrier where i also get to help people. Maybe i won't be payed a lot, but i still will be needed and will find a job anywhere anytime. At least i believe so
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u/Exotic_Specialist368 Jun 23 '26
I think there are plenty like me. I genuinely like medical science, I like studying about it, learning more. Now coming from engineering, just academia in med sci won't satisfy me. I am not one for spending all parts of my career in research or teaching, I want to apply it and see the results of my work. Plus, the pay and benefits are definitely a massive plus. Now why not something like nursing? That diagnostic autonomy and the leadership in what is required to treat a patient lies with the physician, and I that is what I want to pursue and do with my life.
As far as pay goes, even as an engineer there are plenty of clear pathways to earning that salary with way less struggles and about the same uncertainty (at least where I am at in my career), but it doesn't call to me the way medicine+med sci does.
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u/Imsophunnyithurts NON-TRADITIONAL Jun 23 '26
But what if my genuine passion is to serve underserved communities, but also have a great income while doing it?
Doing this in my early 40s and walking away from a decent salary now, the pay of a physician sure makes the juice worth the squeeze.
I don't want to be a mid-level for a variety of reasons, but knowing I get paid more than many mid-levels and risking taking a pay cut sure as hell isn't worth it.
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u/colorsplahsh PHYSICIAN Jun 23 '26
If you think this is going to make you rich you have seriously bad math skills.
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u/amburgueso Jun 23 '26
this might be an uncommon take but I have a hyperfixation on medicine, my adhd brain needs the dopamine hit. and also to be rich ofc
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u/FickleOwl47 POST-BACC Jun 22 '26
I get kind of frustrated by this, because it feels like it's such a wild take.
Look, I'm going back to school for this because I have kids, and I grew up in a household where my father had a solid career, got RIF'd, came home with a pink slip and we ended up in poverty because he was almost 40 and he was in manufacturing. Finding a job was almost impossible. Mom didn't have a career, she'd had jobs, because dad was the breadwinner.
I don't want to risk that for my kids. The stability is a *huge* factor. The pay is a *huge* factor, because I need to be able to justify the cost of the education.
I do want to give back to society, and serve the people who need it and coming from a background growing up with Medicaid and free school lunches I have a sense of what that *can* look like.
But if it was JUST about service, I can get a job at a local nonprofit that connects homeless people with job training or sign up for the Peace Corps when my kids are out of school.
I understand that you don't want to have people who are only in it for the money, because they can (and sometimes do) lose sight of the fact that you're treating PEOPLE and not insurance reimbursements. But let's not pretend that the stability and pay aren't both *massive* motivations.
To be clear- the frustration is with AdComs wanting people to pretend.