Med School or Finance

Finance

don't do med

What part of medicine are you interested in?

Seems like you kind of answered your own question a bit here

"My main goals (aside from the classic answers: autonomy, success) include the desire to own/invest in a business, and generate wealth for me and my family" - you can do this if you take risk as a medical doctor and open a private practice. A cousin of mine did this and ended up selling to a PE firm and just works part time now (had to sell for health reasons).

I would seriously consider medicine. With the rise of AI and continued advancement I see more and more of the basic finance grunt work being eliminated or severely reduced. Medicine also a practical skill that's transferable to many places. A broken bone is a broken bone doesn't matter where it is in the world. Revenue however, ask 3 different people you'll probably get 3 different answers. Nobody, other than the pretentious hardo on this forum, gives a fuck if you can use excel w/o mouse or if you can do mental calc of IRR to multiple. If you're worried about money. I haven't seen a poor doctor yet. Plenty of struggling analyst on this forum complaining about subpar bonus, hours, stupid/insane bosses, etc. All high level finance is just follow the herd. You do what your boss tells you, your boss listens to the likes of Jaime Dimon & others, they do what these TV talking heads say. There is no real thinking involved, unless you really like rearranging that logo for the hundredth time or changing that perpetuity rate from 3.0% to 3.25%. Just my $0.02

Do you like hospitals, do you like dealing with the general public/patient population on some level? Are you okay with treating crazy ass people, some of which will want you to write pain meds and if you don’t will stalk you? Something to think about, medicine, absent path and rads can have a lot of patient interaction that can be mostly good but also very bad. 
 

For me, the only place I hate more than the airport is the hospital or the doctors office. I hate the lights, the people, the stupid protocol. I worked at a doctors office for years in highschool in an internal medicine practice and that was a big part of me deciding f this.

I studied chemical and biomolecular engineering and graduated 2nd in my engineering class, I did so in case I wanted to go into medicine. By the time I was finishing undergrad, I knew medicine was something I could excel in but I really didn’t want to spend 4 years memorizing material like a donkey to get there and I just didn’t want to deal with sick people. 
 

you should boil this down to your fundamental likes and dislikes because it’s a long road either way. 
 

I will say - while I was grinding in industry, my Med school peers were actually having a pretty good time. It didn’t seem nearly as miserable for them as some would have you think, they had a good group to hang with and commiserate and of course girls start gearing up and want to marry an MD, but the sheer number of years followed by residency and then potentially fellowship are taxing. 
 

one of my best friends became an Ortho, his loan payment is $4800/mo as he is trying to knock that shit out in under ten years. He’s not very happy about that as you can imagine. 

For context I’m a physician planning on a career change after training.

Your main goals are to own a business and generate wealth. Even ignoring that your interest in medicine seems fleeting at best, and that others in real life have told you not to do it, your stated goals are those of a businessman/financier, not a physician. You should become a physician because you like the humanitarian idea of helping the sick, and also like human physiology. Trying to calculate and make decisions on marginal differences of perceived “probable” financial paths is incredibly foolish.

The path in medicine is incredibly long. I’m in year 9 of this shit post-undergrad. I have consistently worked long ass hours including frequent nights and weekends and still have almost 2 years to go. My reward thus far has been a hefty student loan package and now make about $70k a year. Sorry but that’s absurd and anyone remotely motivated by money should take the path of many of my non-med friends who are now light years ahead of me financially.

I will ultimately get compensated well but making up the lost ground is enormous. The ceiling is also much lower. You would have to be delusional to do med school on a whim.

My parents and brothers are doctors and they all strongly encouraged me not to follow suit.

Insurance costs, insurance risk mitigation procedures, an influx of foreign doctors, and a disruption of traditional care architecture (robotics, AI, corporate owned urgent care, lack of cost controls, unchecked litigation, etc) have stripped most joy and margins out of the profession and most general practitioners were struggling to make any meaningful money.

My parents make less now, by a considerable margin than they did 20 years ago, my brother went into plastic surgery (about a 12 year track, and is making decent money doing mostly Botox and nose jobs), my other brother became a professor, and said he will never go back to practicing medicine.

IB

IB has changed dramatically in the last 15-20 years.

Technology has gotten much better, and I suspect AI will drastically accelerate this, and less and less people are required for more deal throughput. There are more boutiques than ever nipping at margins, and there are less exit opportunities than ever before.

I got into Med school and chose finance, my rational was (NPV) make more now, instead of investing 8 years, hopefully rise up the ranks or exit and continue to outpace what I would have made in medicine, then retire well before most medical specialists (they usually hit their high earning power much later, and thus tend to work well past standard retirement age).

I think the opportunities in IB will be fewer and further between going forward, with exits to asset management shops and corp fin becoming more common.

Medicine will take at least 10 years (med school, residency, specialization, etc) to start seeing meaningful money. There is a risk AI and robotics will drastically change medicine and the insurance and expenses will continue to rise.

IB / Finance will continued to be volatile, but still presents better near/short term income potential.

I like the idea of medicine, because no one can ever take that away, it is a useful applicable skill, you can practice your entire life, and if you choose the right track you can do really well.

I like IB/Fin because of the near term income, the potential for exits, and the energy and intellectual stimulation of the "space".

If I had 15 years back, I think I would have probably still done finance.

I would add that I do know a lot of MBA/JDs in the VC and PE space, and they do very well and are happy, but it is minimum a 5-6 year road.

Side note:

My parents think being a PA (Physicians Assistant) is the best job in medicine now $175-250k in large markets. Low/no liability, all the knowledge, all the respect, great hours, strong, tremendous demand.

 As the younger sibling of someone who's a vascular surgeon, Medicine is ONLY worth it if you're in it for something other than just the money. Yea you're guaranteed half a million every year or two after you become a doctor, but thats after 8 years of extra schooling (undergrad and med, 9 if you take a gap year which a lot of people do) and keep in mind that's all unpaid. Then you have 3-5 years of residency, where you'll make chump change. You won't break into that golden pot of money until you're in your 30s. I'd recommend you do it only if u feel you have a true passion for medicine and you're okay with the struggle that comes with pursuing this

Med

I am writing this because this exact decision was present in my life - and I made the wrong choice.
My family are all in the medical field (all doctors pretty much) and I dropped out of pre-med early on to focus on finance.

Despite the family connection/network I thought finance would be the right way forward, it wasn't. Career progression was fast initially, but slowed down to a crawl in my late 20s. There was no useful connection that would push me past other candidates, and there weren't that many roles to begin with.

If I had chosen medicine, my family network alone would have helped so much get into the right places at the right time.

You should do what you're interested in and stop looking for validation on the internet from strangers who don’t care about you.

Just do MB- MBA after IB jump into PE for healthcare and tech. Healthcare is one of any country's most profitable economic sectors, especially biotech and pharmaceutical.  If it a not medical school, just get a master's in healthcare-related. Their numbers exist opp in healthcare, I have a friend who nurses anesthesiology and makes more than 200k on an annual salary. But stop shadowing, and get more experience in IB and finance-related opportunities, medical school is not going anywhere. Worst case scenario, you will cap an annual salary between 100k to 200k!

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**Community College is a big taboo, especially in the states.**

If your goal is maximize wealth, finance is the EASY answer.

The proportion of docs making 500k+ is dwindling - practices are being bought up left and right by health systems and insurance ecosystems. The administrative work is increased dramatically. Labor shortages impact you. As someone mentioned, you're dealing with gen pop - this is really underestimated. The majority of the population isn't Ivy League educated, nor even state school educated. The majority of the population you would see (unless you're in plastic surgery, etc.) probably doesn't read on a high school level. If you pay for your education, you just cost yourself another 500k in actual costs. You also just lost 7-10 years of income (and savings that will grow). The school is super stressful (and job)

Finance - sure the number of people making 7 figures is overstated (or honestly not, it just probably won't be you), the path to making 6 figures is very easy, and over time to making in the range of 200-400k is relatively clear. You start at an earlier age. You sit at a desk (easy), you interact with similar minded people, there are fake emergencies but no actual emergencies. You can choose where you want to live (sometimes as a doc you just have to do your job in the midwest, etc.)

If you put a bunch of successful people in a room and talk to all of them about their path to success, the thing they’ll have in common is that they have passion for their work.

Don’t choose a career for money because the people at the top of almost every field are rich. Choose the field you’ll excel in.

InvisibleHand

Hey wso,

I am at a crossroads. I graduated in 2021 with a degree in econ, and have some experience to my name mostly in the form of a year-long internship at a small M&A boutique (they had made it clear from the beginning that they were not looking to hire full time). In summer ‘22 I started seriously considering a career in medicine. I was attracted by the unique nature of the work, and I have always had an interest in science. I proceeded to take pre-req courses at a community college for the next two semesters, while shadowing physicians and asking them about their input on the future of the industry. The answers I received where overwhelmingly negative. Physicians and surgeons would go as far as to say that they were discouraging their own children from pursuing a career in medicine.

In parallel, I was still subconsciously “plugged in” to the finance world. My free time was filled by finance podcasts, WSJ, reading earnings reports, and keeping up with IB/PE news. It wasn’t intentional, I’m just passionate about the industry.

This leads me to now. I don’t know whether I should pursue an MSF and fully dedicate myself to finance or go the other way and continue towards med school.

My main goals (aside from the classic answers: autonomy, success) include the desire to own/invest in a business, and generate wealth for me and my family.

Would appreciate any input you can provide. Thanks.

What were the doctors telling you when discouraging you about the future?

I think I’m your guy for this question.

I actually did a year of medical school and deferred and am now in a full-time investment banking role.

I could write a book on why I left medicine, but the major conclusions I came to were as follows:

1. High floor, low and concrete ceiling (in Canada at least)

2. Under thumb of government for getting paid - east target

3. Mid level encroachment

4. Insane matching/residency system that can displace you in your prime years

5. Addendum to 4, matching (like all of medicine) is extremely woke so I suspect I would have gotten the shitty end of the stick

Medicine really is a labour of love. I know many who stayed who would shit on paediatrics because they don’t make enough, they were in it for the wrong reasons.