The Downsides to gap year before med school

WayOutWestMom
Tue, 22 Jul 2025 20:50:35 +0000

Hmmm…the author assumes that medical education loans are “low cost.” This will no longer be true starting 2026, when federal student loans get capped at $50K/year for professional students with a lifetime cap of $200,000 (including any federal student loans taken during undergrad). This means that med students will be taking higher cost/more expensive unsecured private loans to finance their medical education. Current interest rates for those are running anywhere from 10% to over 35%.

For students who do not come from wealthy families, this means they either need to go into substantial debt, possibly unsustainable debt, in order to pay for med school or they need to work to put away a cushion to help minimize the amount of loans they need to take out.