Every year, thousands of people become doctors, but only after spending a significant number of years cramming information into their heads. (In 2023, for instance, as many as 28,811 people in the US alone graduated from a medical school.)
It’s no secret that that’s not an easy feat to accomplish, as medical training can take more than a decade of a person's life. According to Indeed, becoming a fully licensed and practicing physician usually takes at least 10 years as it requires a lot of time spent studying, in addition to practical training in a medical environment. With a specialty, the number of years can increase even more.
According to the U.S. News, going through medical school is difficult not only because of how demanding it is or how many years it takes but also because it can get quite costly. The aforementioned source reports that in 2022-2023, the average cost of attendance for 43 private medical schools ranked for both research and primary care was about $63,000. Needless to say, that’s not a sum one can part with without batting an eyelid.
Delving deeper into the financial aspect of getting a medical education, Dr. Andrea Stolar, senior associate dean of student affairs at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, emphasized that many people already have loans from undergraduate school, which then add to their loans for medical school.
"Then, they are going to have multi-years of residency where they are paid a salary, but not sufficiently to really start making any headway on their loans. It's a long stretch to be willing to put off the things that a lot of your friends might be doing as they start jobs and start (to) experience life," the expert told U.S. News.
Unfortunately, student loans are not unheard of among aspiring medical professionals. According to Education Data, as much as 73% of medical school graduates have educational debt. The average debt of med school graduates with medical school and premedical deb—but no non-educational debt—was reportedly as high as $264,519.
Despite it being a long and arduous journey, becoming a doctor is on many people’s bucket lists from an early age. (Likely because at the age of five, you don’t really think about how difficult it is to learn a bunch of Latin names or pay off student loans.) A survey conducted in the UK found that as much as 13% of kids want to become doctors when they grow up!
If you’re wondering what the biggest challenge for beginners in med school is, it’s people. By that, I mean their anatomy, as studies have found human anatomy to be the most challenging course for first-year med students.
