Medicine to Investment Banking, Should I go back?

Hey everyone,

Sort of really need to vent... and would love any input that you guys have. I'm a recent graduate from a top 5 school in the US with dual degrees in Bioengineering and Economics. I ended up applying to medical school last year, sat on a bunch of waitlists, but ultimately didn't end up getting in. After working for a year in a boutique hospital consulting firm(which I absolutely hated) along with bioengineering research at my university (which I actually really enjoyed), I ended up landing an investment banking analyst position at an elite boutique in SF. I didn't work any previous internships through my economics experience, but have published 4 papers (one in Nature Magazine) and am on two patents as well. This was sort of the differentiating factor with what caught their eye. I'm currently working in the healthcare group of the investment bank, focusing on life sciences/ pharmaceuticals/biotechnology.

As far as medical school, I didn't end up sending out another round of applications this year, with the perspective that I should try other things first since medical school didn't end up working out the first time. My goal actually was never really to practice, but to go for an MD/MBA and then head straight to venture capital/ business. I've always been entrepreneurial at heart and tailored my undergraduate education to give a strong science background with a thought-process to scale ideas and things(through economics). I guess after researching profiles of some of the famous physician turned investment bankers through LinkedIn, and even in media, like Dr. Burry from The Big Short-- it seems like the time and money put into an MD/MBA over 5 years (~280k for MD and another 100k for MBA) without a residency (additional 3-8 years) is useless, since you could be earning great money during the time you'd be in school-- not to mention all the debt that comes with medical school and extended training through residency if specialization in Derm/Surgery/Ortho is the goal.

As far as my background, almost all my family friends and even immediate family made their living through technology/ software so investment banking is like a new, confusing thing for them-- they don't know analysts make a base of 85k + around 40-50k bonus in the first year(or higher), with climbing exponential pay through every year with managing directors making tons. They think its like any other business analyst position with like a 40k salary and software engineering is the only 100k job on the planet. So every time we have anyone over it's always "why aren't you going back to medicine?" "go do medicine" which can get really frustrating to hear over and over again, and it feels like I have to justify myself for what I'm doing even though economically it clearly makes sense to just stick with the job if money is the goal. Why do they keep pestering? what even comes out of this

My questions are:

1) Should I working in banking for a year, see if I like it, and then shift towards medicine or just stick it out with banking and climb ranks?

2) Where would the compensation be greater between fields in the long-run (assuming I stick in the healthcare sector, how does this compare to TMT? )

3) If you could go back in time (targeted towards most senior bankers here) would you go for medicine given the stability and salary (minimum 200k) that comes with the job?

 
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