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    Re: AA or medical school? Archived Message

    Posted by FutureAA on March 30, 2009, 8:49 pm, in reply to "Re: AA or medical school?"

    I have to say I disagree with Lipton and KC. I don't think that you should necessarily just go to med school cause that was your original plan and you got in. I'm somewhat of a non-trad student, I'm 25, so still not old, but I'm not fresh outta college. I have to say that I was interested in med school when I started college, but since then my plans changed. I've been married for two years, and I'll be starting AA school in the summer. I had the grades and test scores to go to med school (at least I like to think so ) but once I really started to think about the time involved, I had to choose against it. Its gonna be hard for the 2+ years I am in AA school, but I can't imagine how hard 9 years of med school and residency would have been. And that's with a wife, i mean, she can take care of herself, but you are a single mother. Now if you're all gung-ho on the idea of med school and think you can do it, that's great. But just think about it, you'd be pretty much devoting 95% of the next decade of your life to becoming a doctor. Are you okay with missing out on a lot of your kid's first 10 years of life? And from what I can gather, most MDs work a lot more than AA. For me, going to school for a little over 2 years, and then being able to make great money, do most of anesthesiology stuff an MD can do, and have pretty good hours which will allow me to spend time with my wife and (soon to be) kids seems a lot better than the MD route.

    Believe me, I'd love to be called "doctor" someday, but when I really stepped back and looked at the big picture, AA was the way for me. Not to mention the finances. MD = 200k-300k in loans and no salary for 4 years, and then resident pay for 4-5 years. AA = 70k-80k in loans and no salary for 2 years, then you make between 120k-200k from then on. Obviously an MD will make much more than an AA, but if you do the math as far as investing, savings, interest, etc. well, lets just say if I was to go the MD route, I would start to be ahead of the AA-me when I would be about 53. Hope that's something else for you to think about. But hey, either way, kudos on getting accepted to both, and GOOD LUCK!

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