 When I pay $203,220 to go to Harvard, are these Ivy League medical schools that much better than all of the other med schools? Let's find out. Welcome back to my channel, everybody. For those of you who are new around here, my name is Michael, aka Dr. Gelini, and I am a radiologist in my final year of training, sub-specializing in interventional radiology in New York City. On today's video, we're going to go over something a bit controversial. We're going to talk about why your med school doesn't matter at all. Or does it? Let's find out. Now, before we go ahead and get into why your medical school doesn't matter, let's go ahead and talk about the different tiers of medical schools. Now, there are a ton of different websites out there, such as US World News Reports that kind of rank medical schools as the top medical schools based off a ton of different arbitrary things, such as research grants, you know, I don't even know what they rank the medical zone. I like to keep it pretty simple. We'll break things down into two different tiers of medical schools. We have the first tier of medical schools, which are Ivy League schools, such as Harvard, U-Pin, Yale, et cetera. And then we have the second tier of medical schools, which is every other medical school that isn't those I just listed. The reason I break it down this way is because medical schools such as Harvard, Yale, U-Pin will open up different doors and opportunities throughout your life that the other medical schools and the other tiers just won't really do. All of the other medical schools that aren't these Ivy League medical schools are pretty much the same. And I'll touch more on that in a minute. Now, I'm not trying to say that all of these other medical schools that aren't the Harvard's and Yale's of the world won't open up doors and leads opportunities, but generally they just don't open as many doors as these Ivy League schools do. But are these Ivy League medical schools that much better than all of the other med schools? Probably, it's hard to really tell. One thing we do know is that they produce the brightest minds in medicine year after year for decades and decades. These schools attract the brightest people around the world and you get to work with the brightest people around the world. So that creates just a successful, well-rounded, well-trained position. It follows the old saying, if you wanna be successful, hang around with successful people, which is what I kinda live by and what I try to do all the time. So let's look at the financial differences between these Ivy League medical schools and all the other ones. So comparing costs of med schools is arguably, comparing costs of med schools is arguably one of the most important things to consider when choosing a medical school. So let's look at Harvard, for example. Harvard has one of the highest tuitions of any med school across the United States and I'll list some of the top 10 med school tuitions right here on the screen. And as you can see, Harvard is one of the top. So Harvard charges 64th up. Who the hell is, Harvard charges $64,984 per year for tuition. That is bare bones tuition does not include any room and board or other fees like that. But luckily on their website, they do list the total tuition plus room and board and all that stuff. And for first year comes out to $97,546. Second year comes out to $102,606. Third year is $103,340 and fourth year is $101,020. So just looking at that, the total cost of attendance of Harvard with just tuition alone is $259,936. And if you include room and board and fees, this does not count, you know, any of your extracurricular activities or food or anything like that, just the bare bones tuition fees plus room and board equals $404,512. And one thing you don't realize when you come up with this enormous number is it doesn't include interest on those loans, which can be pretty high and that'll push it up into the $500, $600 range by time you finish residency. Just by looking at this, even with just the tuition alone, $259,936, that is a huge number just to pay to go to school. And for comparison, I wanted to look up a state school in the state that I grew up in, which is the state of Georgia. There is a college called Medical College of Georgia or Augusta University or something, what it is now. I don't even know what it is now, but that is an in-state school that charges in-state tuition to the Georgia residents. For in-state tuition at the Medical College of Georgia, they charge $14,179 per year for tuition alone. So just compare that to the $64,984 at Harvard. You can already see there's going to be a bit of a difference. Now I know what you all are thinking. You're comparing in-state tuition to a private, very well-known academic institution. And okay, I hear you. So let's compare apples to apples here. Let's compare out-of-state tuition at Medical College of Georgia to Harvard tuition. The out-of-state tuition cost at Medical College of Georgia is $28,358 per year compared to, like I said, $14,179 for in-state tuition. Now the total cost of attendance for all four years at Medical College of Georgia is $56,716 versus $259,936 at Harvard, which gives you a difference of $203,220 between two schools that gets you to the exact same place becoming a physician. So you really wanna ask yourself, is going to an Ivy League med school worth $203,220? The answer is maybe. And here's why. I touched on this a bit earlier, but places like U-Pin, Harvard, and the Yale's of the world will open up doors to opportunities you probably won't get access to unless you were in those small Ivy League communities. I've witnessed it firsthand throughout my life, not only in medicine, but finance as well. I've had many friends who graduated from Columbia. There's a weird kind of connection between Ivy League grads and they always kind of help each other out. It's kind of like a fraternity or a sorority and a sword. On top of that, when people see Harvard or U-Pin on your resume, they will always comment on it. They will always be impressed and you will likely always be pushed to the front of the row in front of anybody else who did not go to Harvard. The name definitely carries a lot more weight than you could even imagine. And I'm sure some people at Harvard can comment below and attest to this kind of thing. Just as an anecdotal note, I was watching Shark Tank the other night and they always asked where the people went to school or where they got their MBA from or where they went to medical school. And anytime they say Harvard or Wardens School of Business at U-Pin, they're always like, wow, it's just an impressive thing to go to an Ivy League school and it carries a lot of weight. And again, like I touched on earlier, you may get a better education because you're surrounded with the best of the best. The brightest minds go to this school and the brightest minds become professors and they teach these students how to become the best doctors. Ultimately, is the Harvard name worth $203,220? That's for you to decide because everybody is different and everybody is in a different socio-economic situation. Are you planning on staying in academia and doing research as a physician the rest of your life? If so, going to an Ivy League school may be worth the money because you may not have access to those appointments or research grants or whatnot if you didn't go to those schools. Furthermore, there's a common trend if you went to an Ivy League med school, they kind of stay in this perpetual Ivy League rotation. Ivy League med students will go to Ivy League residencies, Ivy League residents will go on to get Ivy League appointments at another Ivy League institution. It all stays kind of centralized amongst the Ivy League crew, if you will. For those people who are like me and who don't really want to get involved in academic research and all that stuff, finding the cheapest route into medical school may be the best option for you. Medical school is basically something we just have to do in order to get into residency where we can then become a well-trained, skilled physician in our specific field. This is why I say your med school ultimately doesn't matter because residency is where you really hone your craft and where you develop your skills in your specific specialty. We learn a ton of different information in medical school but we don't actually apply that information on a regular basis as a physician. Take me for instance, I obviously specialize in radiology and am subspecializing by doing a fellowship in interventional radiology. We probably took a few radiology centered exams but I didn't learn how to be a radiologist in med school. I learned how to be a radiologist in residency. My whole goal of making this video was to highlight the importance of residency instead of focusing on your medical school. Residency is ultimately where you'll be learning your skills that you'll be practicing and utilizing the rest of your life. I learned probably 99.99% of my specialty in residency and if I learned anything radiology related in medical school, it was either too basic or I just forgot it. And that's not unique to my field. Just think of anything, think of a surgeon. Yes, we learned surgical anatomy and we learned basic surgical procedures but you don't learn how to operate in med school. You learn how to operate in residency. So the real question is would I pay $203,220 to go to Harvard over my in-state school in Medical College in Georgia? The answer for me is a resounding no. It's probably easier for me to say no because I can look back in hindsight and hindsight is always 2020. I've seen how far I've come in my own career and I did it all without an Ivy League med school. Maybe I would have had better opportunities if I wore a Harvard train but I'm not. So I'm okay with where I am today. People outside of medicine really don't understand medical training. They don't understand that just because you went to Harvard for a specific specialty doesn't mean you went to the best residency or medical school for that specialty. For example, I'm at one of the top IR programs in the country but people outside of my interventional radiology world may not know that where I'm doing fellowship is the top of the top. And they may think I'm lesser trained than someone went to Harvard. So back to that question, would I go to Harvard knowing how much I would have to pay if I wore a pre-med rather than where I am today? And I would probably say yes. I would probably pay the extra $200,000 to go to Harvard because as a pre-med you don't know what to expect in the future and you want the best of the best. But would I go somewhere other than Harvard in that second tier that I talked about that still had exorbitant tuition fees without the premium of the name Harvard? Probably not. Anything in that non-IV league tier will open the doors that Harvard will. So why pay the premium at that school if you don't get any of the benefits of paying that premium, if that makes sense. Now ultimately it is up to you where you decide to go to med school and the two main takeaways of this video I was trying to show are one, student debt is very real and should not be overlooked when looking at med schools. And two, where you go to med school really doesn't matter because you ultimately learn your craft in residency. With that, hope you all enjoyed this video as always. Leave a comment below. If you have a question, also leave that in the comments below and I will try to answer it. As you know, I usually respond to questions in the first hour the video is posted. Maybe two hours, we'll see. As always, make sure you follow me on Instagram and TikTok and I'll see you all in our next video.