I’m a high school senior and strongly interested in a career in medicine. I’ve been accepted to Georgetown, and will probably go there because I absolutely love it. I didn’t get any financial aid- my parents can pay for it and are more than willing to do so, however paying full tuition for Georgetown will mean paying for medical school will be very tough.
How realistic is it to pay full tuition for medical school? Is it worth it?
I think you need to have some idea of what your total indebtedness will be and how that compares to the earnings you might expect upon graduation. That’s the only way you can start to determine if it is “worth it”.
Keep in mind that you will have an internship and a residency (and maybe even a fellowship) somewhere in there and you need to make sure that they qualify for repayment deferral or the full brunt of the payments will hit you at a time when you have limited income.
Most students I know have been told by their parents that while college may be covered, graduate school is their personal responsibility.
There is very wide variation in the price of “full tuition” for med school.
There are some state public med schools where in-state tuition is under $20K/year. OTOH, there are private med schools and OOS publics were tuition is over $70K/year.
See a list of med schools’ tuition here:https://services.aamc.org/tsfreports/select.cfm?year_of_study=2015
AMCAS has a useful info card about the average indebtedness of new medical grads together with sample repayment programs here:
https://www.aamc.org/download/152968/data/debtfactcard.pdf
Be aware that the median debt skews low because fully 14% of all new medical grads had ZERO debt.
You and your parents also need to be aware that OOS public med schools and all private med schools will require parental financial information and assess a parent contribution whether or not your parents are willing/able to provide any financial help to pay for med school. This will be true even if you have graduated from college and have been self-supporting for several years. (Parental financial info is still required for students who are well into their 30s.)
If you really want to be a physician, there are options to help pay for your medical education, but they will require some sacrifices on your part.
There are several scholarship options which will pay for med school (tuition plus a living expenses stipend) if you promise to work as physician in certain areas or specialties.
HPSP (Health Profession Service Program) requires a 4+ year commitment to serve in either a branch of the military or the Public Health Corp upon completion of your medical residency
NHSC (National Health Service Corp) requires a 4 year full time or 8 year half time commitment to work as a primary care physician in a medically underserved area.
A number of states also have their own versions of NHSC. (Loan forgiveness in return for working in a medically underserved area.)
There is another option if you’re sure that medicine is in your future: give up your acceptance to Georgetown and attend a less expensive college. This could be an in-state public or a school where you’ve received large merit to reduce the list price. Yes, this may require you to “sacrifice” some prestige, but: a) medical school adcomms don’t care about the prestige of your undergrad (as in not a factor in admission decisions); and b) you can consider that this is just the first many sacrifices that a career in medicine requires.
As for medicine being "worth it"--that's something only you can decide. Medicine is as much a calling as a profession. Those who go into medicine just because they're seeking a fat paycheck inevitably end up very unhappy.