To any current students, if you're taking out loans, does the estimated CoA on the BUSM website cover living expenses sufficiently well, or is it likely I'll have to take out more to cover rent, food, etc.? Total personal living expenses for M1, outside of tuition, fees, and books, is about 16000, about 21-23000 for M3 and M4.
Not sure how helpful this answer will be, but it depends a lot on individual situations so I'll try to just go over things to consider for your (or anyone's) personal situation, if that makes any sense. Overall, CoA has been more than enough for me (about to start M4) & most people are able to make it work. I'm also not sure if you can technically take out more loans than the CoA that BU gives.
Overall things that your money will potentially go to:
- will loan money be your only money or do you have more saved away that you can use for things (if needed)
- are you generally good at budgeting? --> it's helpful to figure out how much money after rent you'll have left over every month to spend
- Do you tend to spend lots of money on food/drinks/shopping/activities/traveling? (not terrible, it will just make $16000 harder to stretch, and you might need to cut back)
- housing/moving:
- Rent: Most of that money goes towards rent, so if you live in the MSR/somewhere with equivalent rent, ($900/month?) you'd have a lot of money left over & that amount is very doable. If you end up living elsewhere with higher rent, that will eat up even more of that money. (especially if you're paying a broker's fee/security deposit & cable/utilities on top of rent).
- Buying crap: if you're moving somewhere unfurnished, you're gonna need to buy all sorts of furniture, kitchen stuff, etc depending on what you already own or don't (still need kitchen/bathrooms stuff for MSR, just not bedroom/living room)
- moving to boston--it's gonna eat up some of your money before you get your loans
- Moving again...cause if you move after M1, you're going to be paying security deposit/1st+last month's rent, maybe broker's fee, etc all with your M1 loan money
- food: I know people who eat out a lot and spend more, and people who tend to spend maybe $150/month on food. Trader Joes, Tropical Foods, and stop&shop are relatively cheap options. Eating out frequently will obviously use up more of your budget
- Other possible expenses: a car (which I wouldn't really suggest bringing) +/- parking ($$), pets, hobbies, family, etc etc that could add up.
- Summer/vacation week plans: what you're planning to do in the summer between M1/M2 also factors in because you won't get M2 loans until late summer so you'll need to use M1 money for that.
- books: I forget what they put for books, but there's very few you actually need to buy the 1st 2 years, so you probably won't use all that money.
- Transportation: costs will also vary depending on if you live walking distance from school or not. And if you're a cab/uber person or walking/public trans person (definitely get a plastic charlie card as the fare is cheaper than if you use paper ones)
- health insurance: don't know how old you are, but if you are still covered by your parents, that's an extra $2000 you get back.
- Exams: step 1 exam after M2 costs about $600 I think that you'll need to pay for during M2
I didn't touch so much on M3/4, but it's generally the same, except for factoring in a few grand for exams and another few grand for traveling to/from interviews and applying to residency programs
TL;DR: Yes, it is enough for most people as far as I know, but you'll likely have to be more thrifty than you were pre-med school
🙁 (and importantly, also not live somewhere with absurdly expensive rent). If you have a specific cost question that I didn't answer (or any other BU/boston questions), feel free to ask!