 Medical school is expensive, no surprise there, but exactly how expensive does it get? In today's episode, I'm going to break down exactly how much my entire medical school education cost all the way from my college days trying to get into medical school to know where I am just three months away about to graduate from residency. And what I mean, I'm going to break down everything I mean everything all the way from those big expenses like tuitions and living costs to those small things such as supplies and resources. And we'll get into essentially exactly how much debt I am after going through the entire process and compare that to the typical medical student who also goes through the same journey. And at the very end, I'm going to be sharing some things that I wish I would have done differently. So make sure you stay till then. But really quickly, if you're new here, welcome. My name is Lakshman, internal medicine physician who's just now three months away from graduating residency. And here on the MD journey, I make content to help people like you succeed on your medical journey, but doing it with less stress. So if you're new here and you're listening to the YouTube channel or the podcast, make sure you hit that subscribe button. If you want, definitely check out all the free resources that have for you down below in the description. But let's get into breaking down exactly how much it cost me to become a doctor here in the US. Let's start with my college tuition. Now I went to college between the years of 2011 to 2014. So these numbers from back then, I also got my degree in three years to go ahead and save myself an extra year of tuition. So my overall cost through my tuition each year was $9,800. So multiply that by three ends up being about $29,400, not counting all those fees in extra taxes. Now, because I was a first generation college student in my family, both myself and my parents are very motivated to apply to as many scholarships as possible for myself. And thankfully, we're able to get a good amount. So I think out of that entire $29,000, probably paid of just about $7,500 to $10,000 over the span of three years. And thankfully, during college, I made a decision to live at home and drive the extra 30 to 40 minutes each day. It's really the only thing I was paying for was books and just the cost of transportation. So we'll just go ahead and round it all up as saying $10,000 for total of three years of school. And then next we have to transition into actually applying to medical school. First, we have to talk about taking that dreaded MCAT, which for me was about a memory about $300 to actually take the test and then an extra $300 and just buying books and resources that I used to study for it. Next, we have to talk about the cost of actually applying to the schools. Now I chose the lazy route because I'm from the state of Texas. So basically said, I'm just going to do one application, the state of Texas decided to have their own. And so for me, the entire cost of all the schools at that time, they're about nine to 10 and the state was about $300. But most students choose to actually end up applying through all the schools or at least nationwide through the AMC website. And that costs usually about $70 initially plus $40 for each schools. So that typical cost for another student can be much higher anywhere from $500 to $770. Now that we have college out of the way, now we have to transition into the actual cost of medical school. Now, unfortunately, I didn't have medical school really close to where my family was living. So I did have to make the decision to move to another nearby school in the same state. And so I went to medical school at UT Southwestern in Dallas, Texas with a cost of tuition at that time was about $21,000. Now, I think it's about 25 multiplied by four years, 84,000. Now I also made a decision to apply for scholarships, but it is a lot harder in medical school to get a significant amount of money to pay off that. And so I think maybe a total I got about 6 to 7,000, which I was definitely thankful for, but still brought the total cost of tuition of medical school to about 78,000. And because living at home was no longer an option, this was the first four years of my life where I actually lived by myself. So I got one bedroom apartment that was subsidized by the school itself and I lived there all four years. And I think with the cost of rent, which is about 990 plus internet utilities, basically trashed the cost each month was about $1110. And so total over four years because I pretty much paid entirety was about $53,280. That just makes me sad. We'll come back to the living costs at the very end of the episode to talk about a few things that would have done differently there, but in terms of things I think I did actually well were things such as my food costs, which were about $250 to $300 on a monthly basis, typically spending about anywhere from $30 to $50 in a grocery trip, maybe eating out once. And at that time with my fiance, we make up for dinner once or twice a month. And so the total cost about a year was about $3,000 multiplied by four, about $12,000, which is not the worst for somebody who is still on a budget. Next up we'll talk about transportation. Now thankfully I lived very close to school, maybe about one to two miles away and I had a car of my own, which is fully paid off. And really the main thing I was paying for were things like just gas and maintenance. The car had about 110,000 miles on it by the time I was in medical school and I was driving back and forth between another city about three hours away to see my now wife or at that time fiance since the total cost of transportation over the span of four years, including car repairs, gas, etc., about $5,000. Now so far we only covered the cost of actually getting into medical school and just like living nearby it and like transporting back and forth. But the actual cost of being in medicine is a lot more. Simple things such as this extra medical cost such as buying a set of scope. I had to buy a set of scope twice because I lost it about halfway through about $150 each time, so about $300 total. Things like laptops, you know, I've made a whole video about this on YouTube. I'll link it down below if you guys are interested on some of the best laptops and the decisions you should consider when buying a laptop in medical school. But I made the wrong mistake the first two years of trying to buy as cheap as possible and then finding that they would break really easily which one literally just cracked in half or just like not be able to do the functional task that you need it. So I bought three laptops in medical school. The first one is about $500. The second one also about $500 because I didn't learn my lesson. And then eventually my third or fourth year medical school I bought the laptop I still use today which is about $1,500. So total cost right around $2,500. Next we have to talk about the infamous exam fees. Obviously in medical school you have to take a lot of board or license exams. These are tests you have to take to essentially move on to the next part of your journey. And if you don't pass it typically your school won't allow you to go to the next phase. And so you have at least when I was in medical school you had step one which was at that time graded. Now it's pass-fail. If you guys need more help on those there'll be an episode or a video linked down below. The cost is about $645 to if I remember right. More fees may have bring that up to about $700 to $800. Step 2CK which you typically will take after your third year of medical school right before your fourth year is also about the same cost about $600 to $800. And unfortunately it doesn't stop there because when I was in medical school and it makes me feel a little old as I say this I actually take step 2CS which was like the second part of step 2. And I literally had to go fly to a different city. Thankfully Houston, Texas for me. And take a $13 to $1500 exam not including cost of actually living and flying over there. So thankfully they've taken that away but that was an extra $1400 added to my budget. And then obviously in residency usually by your first or second year you take step 3 which is your final licensing exam. That's $895 as the making of this episode. And while all of that feels like a lot I feel like we're just barely scratched the surface in terms of cost. Next we have to talk about just resources to get through medical school because ideally everything your medical school offers within the tuition should be enough to cover for everything you need to pass those board exams to do really well to be a great doctor. Unfortunately that's not the case and that really varies in terms of what school you went to. I felt like I got great education but still needed extra or felt like at the time that I needed extra to do well on my board. So we talked about just common resources things like online med ed. Thankfully I was lucky that my school paid for it for the major rotations that I needed. I also paid for resources like firecracker which was really early on in medical school that was about $300. Common resources like patelma that was 75 bucks sketchy. I shared with a few friends on one account so I paid about 50 bucks over the span of several months. Obviously I purchased question banks like Uworld, USMLERX as well as Kaplan so all of those combined ended up being anywhere from $800 to $1000 in the span of the entirety of medical school. And then things such as extra books which obviously can't keep track of all of them. Most of them were anywhere from the range of 30 to 50 bucks. And if you just take about all of the rotations that I had to be on most of them I bought some kind of textbook or found something online. So overall cost of textbooks anywhere from $500 to $750. Next up we have to talk about clothes which now as a resident I can be a little bit laid back on and typically wear scrubs to work on most days as a physician. But as a medical student you have to make yourself look really nice and presentable. And so I would make sure I don't have to be buttoned down shirt with a tie, nice shoes, slacks, etc. And then obviously have a different variation for each day of the week. Now thankfully I'm pretty frugal and I don't really care too much about how I look or how many clothes I reuse for how long. I usually would find some of the best dress shirts. Also I tend to be on the lengthier side and couldn't really always find the clothes for my size. So I would typically go for places like Ross, TJ Maxx, or Marshall clothes where it would typically be high fashion brands and they would be selling them anywhere from $17 to $20 for a set of nice but down shirts. And so I think in an entirety of medical school probably spent about $500 to $750. Still keep most of the shirts that I have to this day. And thankfully I've never been that big into clothes and so I feel like the one I have got me through it still does the same. Now that so far is what I would consider to be an overall pretty complete list of just the cost of medical school in college this far but unfortunately that doesn't end there. Next we have to talk about the actual applying process of getting into residency. If you're not familiar residency is essentially you're anywhere from your first three to seven years of being an actual physician where you're training to be whatever actual doctor you want to be. So if you want to be an orthopedic surgeon you would spend about five to seven years within that field. If you want to be an internal medicine doctor like myself it's three years out to medical school. And so we'll talk about salary in those years a little bit later but there is a process just like it was to get into medical school of actually getting to residency. So number one we'd talk about the actual cost of applying to residency. For me thankfully I went to a good school I kind of had an idea of where I wanted to go where I didn't. So I didn't apply to as many schools as most students do. The cost is typically about 99 dollars for your first 10 applications or 10 different programs and then anywhere from 17 to 19 dollars for each program after that. And then once you get about like 20 then it gets a little bit less. Personally I only apply to 20 programs so that put my cost about right under 300 dollars but that's actually pretty abnormal. Most students will go anywhere from 30 to 40 to 50 programs and that can easily put their application costs anywhere to the thousands. If you're interested in how to do well prepping to get into residency and don't want to apply to 50 programs make sure you check out some other programs and videos down below of how to increase your chances of getting into residency. Regardless of how many programs you do apply to once you do get interviews and you're like I don't want to check this place out you obviously have to pay for the cost of travel flights hotels and lodging there. Typically somebody would usually spend about 1500 to 2000 dollars depending on how many programs they apply to how many interviews they go on. Thankfully I didn't apply to as many most of them tend to be in the state so I was driving to most locations and I also had a lot of credit card points. The most places that I went outside of the state were places that I wanted to either visit or go on vacation with my now wife. So overall in addition to the credit card points that I had racked up over the first four years of medical school I had spent about 500 dollars on the cost of travel and lodging so not too crazy. And you would think at this point that that's pretty much it like they've had enough of my money but no even before I got into residency into my number one choice they still required me to pay an extra 200 dollars to do this physician and training license like application in the state of Texas. I'm not sure if it's included in other states but essentially had to pay to basically say that I could train in the state of Texas although I got into residency there. Lots of little hooploss and I'm sure I missed something there but if you add up the entire cost of everything we talked about so far in this episode now maybe off by a few hundred a few thousand dollars depending on which estimate I took the total cost ends up being about to have our attack 169,390 dollars. That obviously includes the cost of college, medical school, applying to residency, all applications and exams and boards and stuff that I had to do. Now what that 169,000 doesn't include is the cost of interest over those four years of medical school so my ultimate medical school debt by the time I graduated was right about 192 to 196 thousand dollars. And as I've learned the hard way on the medical journey the cost never stopped coming. In fact in residency I probably spent anywhere from four to five thousand dollars doing things as basically as registering for board exams like USMLE as well as in my internal medicine boards which I'll take in a few months as well as just applying to have my license in the state of Texas where I'll start working in the month of August and having things like my DEA license each of those cost you know a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars each accumulating to five to six thousand dollars of extra cost so if you sum that up with my medical school debt that is a total cost of right around two hundred thousand dollars. Now I don't know about you but I may have to pause this episode just to have a breath of fresh air and get away from that number but let's go ahead and transition to talking about how my number of two hundred thousand compares to the typical medical school graduate. Now the numbers will obviously vary depending on your source. I'll link down one that I actually enjoy it break down pretty much every year also different medical schools and their cost of your interest you can check out the data from education data.org I will link that blog post down below. They basically said that the estimate after just four years of graduating from medical school doesn't actually include the cost of college is about two hundred and forty one thousand six hundred dollars. And then if you assume that you never paid any type of interest or anything on your loan then after three years of residency you're about two hundred and eighty nine thousand five hundred and forty six dollars in debt that's just insane. And depending on how familiar you are with the education tract of being a doctor you may say two hundred eighty nine is a lot of money but you're going to make six figures anyways that's not terrible. First of all that's a lot of money regardless of how much money you're making. And two unfortunately you go through residency after graduating medical school here in the United States so for me thankfully it was only three years but for some people it can be upwards to seven that doesn't even include things like fellowship so you'd be trying to be a cardiologist or oncologist or a specialist in orthopedic surgery on doing just a spine in the hand. That requires more years and the average salary for me for example in residency was about fifty nine thousand it's multiplied by three my total salary this was a pre-tax is a hundred and seventy seven thousand dollars. And so if you compare that to the overall debt or just the forty thousand dollars of interest gained over three years of residency it does start to take an impact. Now before I get into what I would have done differently which I definitely hope you stick around for I was interested on how long it takes the average doctor or somebody who graduates from medical school to pay off their debt because I really couldn't find an easy number and after doing a lot of research really couldn't find a straightforward answer. In fact I just found that the number varies and it makes sense depending on your tuition where you live your situation do you have a family or not what specialty you ultimately go into and so I ultimately had just had to rely on a bunch of reddit and quorum post and found that the average was anywhere from about 10 to 12 years after graduating from residency typically with people will finish and get their first real boy or real girl doctor job and the average age about 30 to 33 and then found that most people were getting their loans paid off by their early 40s late 40s but I was finding some scary stories like this one for example in quora where somebody was graduating from their medical school debt with five hundred thousand dollars in debt even with a six figure salary most doctors don't make more than two to three hundred thousand dollars obviously some specialists will get into the higher range that is still a lot of money to pay off and if you add in the cost of other living expenses such as paying your mortgage or just saving for a house paying tuitions or paying costs for education for your kids that is stressful so you know how long it takes varies for me personally I hope it doesn't take me 10 years in fact and as I get my first big boy job in just a few months I hope my wife and I can sit down and have a plan and of understanding what our kind of goals are both financially as well as paying off this debt and so maybe in the next three or four or five years that that will be off our balance sheet but we'll see I'll be an update that will have for you guys as I go through this journey now finally I want to end today's episode probably the most important part of this number is nice it was kind of scary obviously for me to go through that but hopefully it gives you a little bit light of the different costs things that you would probably have to consider and I will probably argue that my cost of medical school education just compared to average is a lot cheaper I went to a state school I lived at home I had some scholarships things worked in my favor that may not be your case at all times you may be applying to more residencies because you know mid-school was a little bit harder the board exams can go your way you may have gone to a mid or low tier institution that means you just have to apply to more programs so just keep that in mind is that if anything I would go ahead and look at the estimated cost and if you're living in an area that has a higher cost of living like the northeast or in the west coast like California then that cost will definitely be higher so use some of those numbers use the data from the blog post that I'll link down below to get those numbers yourself but let's go ahead and break down some of the things that I would have done differently starting with number one which is I definitely would have bought less resources until definitely pressed to do so now the cost of resources and paying for things probably wasn't a big proportion of the total cost of medical school we'll get into that in a second but one thing I did feel the worst is when I bought a resource even if it's like $300 and didn't end up using it and I feel like the value of your dollar especially when it's you ultimately paying for that loan later you have to remember the rule that you typically if you borrow a dollar you typically will pay about $2 back for each one so when you get a resource you get a book you get something because you think it's going to help you medical school hopefully this channel helps you realize that more resources doesn't actually mean better results if you're interested all the free resources linked down below helps you understand how to actually get those better results but I've learned from experiences that if I bought that $300 resource now probably would have done the test would I pay $600 for this resource and the answer was no probably wouldn't have bought it and that would have helped me with any book any type of resource any type of q-bank because it would have forced me to say one luxury you're going to use it and two is the worth double the price and if the answer was no then I probably would have held off until I made that decision that yes it was later on number two I would have definitely decreased or considered decreasing my living costs now because I would never lived on my own and trying to then figure out how to balance living with a roommate I just made the decision at least my first year to live by myself and I think I got comfortable despite the cost of my rent which arguably was pretty low at $900 in central Dallas Texas even at the year of 2015 I was pretty low but I had you know great relationships great friendships and the span of my second and third year medical school have easily found somebody to live with and find a good situation where that rent may have gone from 900 to even $700 that would have saved me thousands and thousands of dollars over the span of four years of medical school and ultimately in my med school debt and do I think that living by myself gave me that much more compared to $20 to $30,000 I could have saved it's arguable you know living by myself is where the empty journey started and where I was able to do all of this video and podcasting so maybe it was worth the extra cost but you know honestly I don't know but that was something I'd be at least considered to give you to keep as food for thought when you're making that same decision should I live by myself or should I live with a roommate probably are you find a roommate and if you can't bear them try to find another roommate until you say I have to live by myself reflection number three is definitely considered going to a cheaper medical school if you have the decision which thankfully medical school you do between looking at your options I would at least say that if two institutions are roughly similar one even a tad bit worse I would consider going to the cheaper option knowing that you can work your butt off and overcome the difference now obviously if the difference is that I want to become surgeon general in the United States and you're getting into Harvard another another mid tier then obviously one option is going to help you achieve your goals but if you're not really quite sure what your goals are going to be like I just want to be a good family's medicine doctor I want to be a good surgeon I just want to be a good doctor and this place is close to my home the tuition is nicer or this place is in a fancy area but they overall get into the same kind of residencies depending on what I'm interested in I'd probably say find the cheaper option you'll definitely save yourself you know thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of dollars honestly over the span of four years and definitely with all the interest that you'll cure and finally reflection number four is definitely look for more scholarships this definitely became more of a priority for me as I started to see my med school debt start to build up definitely my third and fourth year but as I've learned the hard way it is hard to make a dent in your medical school education with just one or two scholarships unless they're really big it's sometimes much easier to find a few smaller scholarships that you cure for over time you just have to make that practice before getting into medical school ideally your institution gives you some educational scholarships and then you just keep doing the process every year and try to see if you can just make some kind of small dent over the span of four years that's going to be a big dent now again for me I was gracious enough to get about seven thousand dollars which again is still a good chunk of change but I'm pretty sure if I decided to just be a little bit more proactive I could at least found more money that would now make me have to pay less at the moment but that guys is my entire breakdown of how much it costs me to become a physician here in the United States now I'm obviously not done I know even as I'm becoming a doctor I'm gonna have to keep paying for more and more but hopefully this gives you a nice breakdown of the entire journey let me know what you guys think in the comment section down below if you're watching on YouTube again my numbers don't necessarily mean there can be your numbers in fact I argue that you probably should estimate over whatever I've brought in this episode do you have any questions make sure you add them in the comment section if you did feel he got some value out of this that's really all I try to do in these episodes because honestly the majority what we do here by design here at the MD journey is meant to be free I would argue about 99% of it and that's to essentially help you do better on your journey from my successes my failures and all other people that I've worked with over the experiences so if you feel like man yeah there's some value spit out in this episode go ahead and hit that like button hit that subscribe button hit that application bell let's know the podcast go ahead and hit that follow or subscribe and your favorite listening platform or share it with somebody who do you feel like this could help maybe not this episode but something else that we've shared in the past overall I'm hoping that we can just help each other spread some good vibes in the feel that's everyone for themselves if you did just let me know in the comment section hit that like subscribe button and if you did get some value if you enjoyed this episode and you want more where that came from definitely consider checking out our med school success handbook this was really an entire kind of so far a 6000 word handbook that I've had for lessons and tips that I've gotten throughout my medical school experience that will definitely help you make the experience a lot easier medical school is definitely hard it doesn't have to be as hard as we all make it so if you want to know some of my favorite tips strategies that I've learned absolutely free guide go ahead and check it out below I'm always updating it because I always come to remember new nuggets and experiences from students that I work with to go ahead and check that down below if you're interested and as always if you enjoyed this episode go ahead and check out this episode right here on how to use Anki like a pro as well as this episode right here on how to study for step one now that it's pass fail as always my friends thanks for being a part of my journey hopefully I was a little help to you guys on yours now we'll see you guys in the next one