 So today we are going to talk about the 5.2 million minutes it took me to become a doctor. I actually learned how to use one of these. Let's get into it. Hey guys, welcome to the channel. My name is Lakshman, internal medicine physician. In today's video, I'm going to break down my entire journey to becoming a doctor. Now it doesn't really matter if you're on your medical journey, whether you're a pre-med or actually in medical school, or if you're somebody who's just curious, hopefully this video gives you a little bit of insight of what it actually takes. And in this video, I'm going to be breaking down essentially everything, including the investment of time and money, as well as kind of my extracurriculars, my board scores, things that you guys are curious about. Maybe I don't talk about enough on this channel. But before we get started, if you do enjoy this video on this episode, just go ahead and hit that like button. Did you do it? All right, let's get started. So first, let's start with the actual time investment it takes to become a doctor. And most doctors, at least here in the United States, take the typical routes of four years of college followed by four years of medical school, followed by anywhere from three to seven years of residency, depending on what kind of doctor you want to be. And overall, I did something similar myself. I was able to get my bachelor's in science and neuroscience, a couple of the brain, but I was actually able to do it in three years, it's at four just to save that extra year of tuition. Now, instead of going straight into medical school, I said no thanks and actually decided to take the year off and actually worked entire year working with autistic kids, more on that later. But then I made the decision to go ahead and apply for medical school, I was able to get in on my first try, went ahead and finished my four years of medical school. So when you put all that together, you have three years of college followed by a one year of a gap year followed by four years of medical school. And now currently I'm in year two of three of medical residency. So overall, it took me eight years to actually become a doctor and graduate medical school and get that coveted MD. And now currently I'm about 10 years in. So if you want to do the math, or if you want to go ahead and just use your fancy calculator, it actually comes out to a very nice 3,650 days to actually become a physician. Now doubt in itself actually wasn't that impressive, but then when you break it down further, it actually comes out to about 80,000 days or 5.2 million minutes. And that's when I started rethinking my decision. So next let's go ahead and talk about the cost it took me to become a doctor. Now it's really important to mention just because going through college and medical school, you actually usually aren't working or actually making a decent salary. So the first time you actually make a salary is when you're about 25, 26, you've already gone through eight years of schooling, which means extra cost, extra expenses, and really no income. So me personally, my overall college cost in terms of tuition came out to about $10,000. Now this was a combination of scholarships I had applied for after finishing high school, as well as some support from my family who I'm super thankful for. But next we go ahead and talk about the cost of medical school, and this is where my net worth just took a nose dive. Now financial aid for medical school is pretty hard to come by. Most of it is in the form of loans, which is how I was able to pay for a good chunk of it. I was able to get a few thousand in scholarships, but when you compare that to a $200,000 medical school education, it just barely made a dent. In terms of family support, for me it just didn't make sense to put my family in a situation, but going back $200,000 for my own personal dream of becoming a physician. So I decided to go ahead and personally foot the bill, and now I'm currently about $192,000 in debt in medical school loans. And if you guys are more curious of how I plan on paying that off, there'll be a video link down below where I talk about my medical school loans more in detail. Now that we've covered some of the investments of time and money, I want to get into some of the neat, gritty, juicy details that you may be wanting, such as SATs, MCAT scores, board scores, in case you're actually on the journey yourself. Before we talk about that in the video, I do think it's important to mention why I actually decided to become a physician in the first place. Now I don't want to make this video longer than it needs to be, but basically my desire to become a physician was inspired by a lot of the illnesses that my personal family had. Now thankfully when I was younger, I didn't have a lot of reasons to go see a doctor, but unfortunately a lot of people in my immediate family did. And one thing when I was able to realize is whenever I was in the hospital or in the clinic, I was really able to see how the doctor was not only impacting my family member by making them feel better, but also me, because when my family member was able to be themselves in their own world, they were able to serve their own personal role to me. And so I realized it as a physician that not only can you take care of a patient, but you can also allow that patient to become all of the roles they are in their community, whether that be a parent, a sibling, a daughter, a mother, you know, you name it. And so while I do joke about the time and the cost, all of it so far has absolutely been worth it. So let's go ahead and first take it all the way back to my high school applying to college days and my scores on the SAT and ACT. Now to be quite honest, I didn't remember these scores actually had to look them up. On my ACT, I was able to get a 29 on my first try, which I think was a little bit above average. When I took it, I'm not sure if the scale has changed now. And in my SAT, I think I have between an 1800 and a 1900. I think I took it twice just to see if I was able to improve my score. Now these scores by no means were the most impressive, but they were a little bit above average and they were able to come into university that I wanted to. Now fast forward to the MCAT, which is the exam you'll take to try to get into medical school while you're in college. My score on the MCAT was a nice solid 30. My MCAT score was right above average for most students who took it and also met kind of the criteria of a good enough score to get into medical school. So I decided to just take the test once, now try to improve my score and just hope to the med school of God that I would get in. Thank you. Now I am very lucky and thankful that I was able to get into medical school on my first try, but once you get into medical school, unfortunately the grades and scores do not end. In fact, there's two board exams that you take that actually are more stressful than anything I've taken up to that point. First of all is step one, which is an exam that really tests you on every single detail you probably will need to know and not know as a physician. This is something you'll take after about your second year of medical school. And this exam as the making of this video is considered to be the most important test you'll take as a physician because it can really determine what kind of doctor you want to be. Now thankfully for me, my step one went well as able to get a 251, which was above average. It actually kind of kept me in the lines of applying for essentially any residency or specialty that I wanted to. So with that momentum, I moved on to step two, which is kind of the last board exam you take while at medical school. I was able to get a similar score of a 257, which again is above average well enough to apply to essentially any specialty or residency that I wanted. Now it's important to point out the board scores are just one data point. It's obviously very nice to do well. It's kind of a check mark that you can move on to the next thing. But in case you don't, just remember that there's other things that you can go ahead and boost up on your application. Now to finish off the score section, I do think it's also important to talk about GPA. And for me in college, I was able to get about 3.82 GPA and about the same for my science GPA that medical schools will look at. All of this put together gave me a nice application and I shot to essentially get into multiple different medical schools around the country. But I think the most important thing that was able to increase my chances of getting into medical school and to become a doctor was actually the extra curriculars that I did. And so if you're a student applying to medical school, or if you have somebody who's interested in going to medicine, it's obviously really important to do well in exams. But just in case those don't work out in your favor, your extra curriculars can really make up for some of those. So while I was in college, a few things I was able to do was being the president of one of the pre-med organizations. I was an editor for one of the National Science College's newsletters that would go out. I also worked on a research project for about two years. Thankfully it was published my last year of college right before I was applying to medical school, which definitely helped my application. I worked actually in the student athletic department as both a tutor and just kind of an aide. And finally, I was able to work, like I mentioned, as an autistic therapist. I worked as an applied behavioral analysis therapist, essentially working one-on-one with autistic kids for an entire year. All of that put together was a nice, unique package that no other medical student had. And then going into medical school, extra curriculars aren't as important, but it is important to make yourself look like somebody who's not just interested in being in the books, but also as a decent human being. So a few of the things I was able to do in medical school includes working as an anatomy and microbiology tutor. I was able to start the MD journey during my second year of medical school and I was also able to work on research projects and have a few publications and book chapters with my names on it. But all of that put together, guys, is the journey that I took to become a physician. Now again, it doesn't matter if you are in medical school or if you're thinking about becoming a doctor, or if you just are curious, it's important to mention that no one really has a straight route. There's always bumps in the road, and it may be that your exam scores are not where you want them to be or your GPA is not as high as you'd like, or you may not have extra curriculars you wish you did by the time you're applying. But the most important thing I hope you take from this video is that while it takes a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of effort to become a doctor, if you remember that why for me it was the ability to help more than just my patient, but everyone who's dependent on them, that can really continue to drive you. So if you don't get into medical school or if your board exam doesn't go your way, if you really do want it, you'll be able to continue to make the steps to move forward and try again. But hopefully you guys enjoyed this video on my own, empty journey. I hope that this gives you a little bit of insight in case you're interested in doing the same. Before you click off this video, if you did enjoy the content, then go ahead and describe your finger and just hit that like button. In all honesty, it definitely both helps support the video, the channel, and also lets me know that you guys enjoy content like this and want more. And in case you haven't, go ahead and hit that subscribe button to get two videos just like this one every week and also drop your questions in the comment section down below. If you enjoyed this video, you'll also like this video, how much doctors make the United States, as well as how much I make as a medical resident. So check these out. With that being said, guys, thank you so much for being a part of my journey. Hopefully I've been a little helped to you guys and yours. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.