Funding medical school

WayOutWestMom
Wed, 08 Mar 2017 03:12:44 +0000

@ENsMom

Don’t ask me about the ins and outs of Grad Plus. Neither D had one so I’m not terribly familiar with exactly how they work. (Whether they disburse one or twice a year, whether a student can ask for additional funds later in the year if they have a shortfall, if they can refund within 15 days without a penalty, etc.)

One suggestion–and this is looking way far ahead. Residency interviewing during the last year of med school is expensive. (Your D will be doing LOTS of traveling for interviews–so plane tickets, hotels, meals, car rentals.) So is relocating after graduation to a residency site. Your D may want to consider asking for an extra amount of Grad Plus at the beginning of her 4th year to cover this. If she’s already borrowing close the full COA for her med school (and the most any med student can borrow is the school’s published COA), she may want to bank some her loan monies from years 1-2-3 so she has funds to pay for residency interviews and to pay her moving & relocations costs. New residents don’t get paid until at least 2-4 weeks after they begin residency. She’ll need money for a damage deposit & first month’s rent up front when she signs a rental agreement.

She will also need extra funds during MS3 to pay for USMLE exams. The STEP 2 CS is only offered at 5 cities in the US. (LA, Houston, Philadelphia, Chicago and Atlanta) Your D is required to travel to one of those sites to take the exam. The exam takes a full 8-10 hours and starts at, IIRC, 8 or 9am so she’ll need to spend a night in a hotel before and after.

Also the exams themselves aren’t cheap. I think D2 told me it cost her $1000 just to register for the Step 2CS.