| Topic Name: |
life as a physician |
| Message Name: |
Doctors are so Ignorant. Time to educate all of you |
| Date Posted: |
10/03/2001 |
| In Reply To: |
Your salary as a physician will vary greatly, according to you specialty, area of the country, etc. Salaries range from $60K for primary care/pediatrics/psychiatry, up through $200K plus for surgical subspecialists/radiologists, etc.
If you're primarily interested in making a lot of money, medicine is NOT the place for you, so don't use that as a deciding factor. You will make a nice living, and be able to live well, but it's unlikely that you'll ever reach the stratospheric salaries of investment bankers. Plus, you'll almost certainly have plenty of school debt, and while in residency will earn next to nothing (30-35K/year). If you go into a surgical subspecialty, you may have 7+ years of training after medical school where you will make a very small salary...
I'm not trying to convince you NOT to go into medicine. It's a wonderful field and has a lot of benefits. But money certainly ISN'T the reason to be a doctor! |
| Message: |
Physicians routinely cite Investment Bankers, Consultants and Attorneys as people who earn money than doctors.
Hogwash-Time to educate you ignorant physicians.
The only I-bankers who earn more than physicians are the managing directors. Vice Presidents earn more than primary care physicians but are on par with other physicians. However, it's extremely difficult and highly unlikely that one can even reach the Vice President position. To even break into IB, one must graduate from an Ivy League school or have connections. Then you HAVE to get into an Ivy League or top 15 MBA program to get hired as an associate. Then after that, you have to hope that you can survive long enough to make VP. There is no guarantee with this because your performance is often arbitrary. I-bankers are cut all the time. And I-bankers work longer hours than physicians.
Consultants who earn more than physicians are ones that are in management or strategy consulting with a top a firm with several years of tenure. Again, you must acquire consulting work after college and then you must get into a top 15 MBA program which is not easy. 90% of the consultants who are currently working do not even earn six figures particularly in I.T. consulting.
To be a successfull lawyer, you must not only attend a top 10 law school, you must graduate in the top 10 percent of your class to assure yourself of a physican-like salary. None of this is easy to do. And many people with high grades and LSAT scores get rejected from top 20 law schools because the applicant pool is so large.
To summarize my statements, yes the top I-Bankers, Venture Capitalists and Attorneys earn more than physicians, but then so do most pro athletes and entertainers. The chances of becoming either one of them are about the same.
90% of physicans have an average income(post residency) of 200K. And that's being generous. Realize that most CEOs have base salaries that are far less than this.
I'm have some authority on this. I'm a former I-banker and current attorney. My parents and husband are all physicians.
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