Fellowship vs. Debt?
For the longest time I imagined myself doing and Onc. fellowship after residency. Now that I am about to start residency and they are handing me my bill for this darn M.D. I am getting a little scared of wastng two more years (or 3) not making decent contrabution to paying off my debt. I wonder if any of you out there is either in the same situation or have gone through this. I would love to do Onc but I wouldn't die if I didn't and with a debt of $250,000 getting a decent paycheck so I start getting out from under this is looking pretty good.
I totally feel this comment.
I have nothing especially useful to contribute, as I'm at the same stage in my training/(in)decision process as you, but I agree that this is a real issue.
Seems like the problem is twofold:
#1. Medical education in the US is CRUSHINGLY expensive.
#2. Urologic training/fellowship programs are not completely in-tune with the needs of trainees today. As burdened as we are with debt, a 2 (or 3) year fellowship looks a lot different from a 1-year fellowship...sure, maybe the extra time is a mechanism for selecting only the most dedicated candidates for fellowship and, sure, maybe you need that additional year of research training, but we can all agree that the each additional year required shrinks the candidate pool...and I bet there are some qualified, smart, eager candidates who look at their loan statements at the end of residency and decide that just can't do it.
Maybe I'm especially sensitive to this issue because I'm already committed to a 6-year residency program...and, yes, I remember the stats from Mayo that an extra year of training equates to nearly $1 million in lost income/assets at the time of retirement. Stab me in the face.
If you are interested in a career in academics- A fellowship is a must. However you need not suffer.
I am done with my residency in 4 months and will be doing a THREE year fellowship. I have 130k in debt. However instead of letting that debt accumulate, you can apply for the NIH federal loan repayment program (http://www.lrp.nih.gov/). My three years of fellowship will hopefully (most likely) be funded as a part of this program. It equates to 105k tax free (thats like 175k total). One caveat- If you do a very clinical oriented fellowship (like MSKCC)- it cannot qualify. So get your clinical OR skills up and spend a few years in the lab- you will be fine and you will take a big chunk out of your debt.
This is perfect. Thanks so much for bring this program to the fore front. What's the success rate for applying for these?
You are absolutely correct. As we near graduation... the reality of a 100K-200K debt comes to light. I don't think to many of us realize what the payments will be when we are taking out the loans. But as you get close to graduation and you stare a %1500.00/month loan repayment for the next 5-6 years at a monthly salary of around 2500-3000 after taxes... it makes you wonder just how long you can put off making a decent salary. Of course the numbers will be different for everyone, but having to absorb that type of monthly cost on a resident's salary for 5-6 years and then doing it for an additional 2 years seems a little unreasonable to me.