@pgg So if I can attend a state public school on a full ride I should do this?
I'd heavily lean toward it. A degree without strings, and no debt? That flexibility and lack of debt is immensely valuable.
You can get a great education at a state school. Put up a gpa over 3.5 and a good MCAT score, and you'll get into an excellent US medical school.
One reason I was looking at the academy is simply because I think I would enjoy it. I'm not looking for a social life in college- I love the idea of the military life the academy offers. I know I don't know what I'm talking about till I'm there, but I don't want to be bored at a state school regretting not taking the opportunity to attend AFA.
That's a good reason to go to a service academy. I think they allow you to leave after the first year, free and clear, if you decide it's not for you.
The problem with service academies for future doctors though are
1) The hard (and low) cap to the # of students allowed to go to medical school from each graduating class.
2) The academy's service commitment will add to the .mil-funded med school commitment, essentially guaranteeing you 9 years of obligated service AFTER residency. For a HS senior, that's a clock that won't start ticking for another 11-15 years (4 undergrad + 4 medschool + 3-7 residency/fellowship).
3) It's not easy to get the med school prereqs done. I had a med school classmate from the Naval Academy - he was an oceanography major because it was the only science major with the bio prereqs. I'm not familiar with the AF Academy curriculum, but I bet it's pretty light on the biological sciences. Yes, you can go to medical school with ANY undergrad degree ... but there's a reason most of us were bio-type majors.
4) It's possible but not easy to get the other usual pre-med boxes filled, whether its research, volunteer time, shadowing. This stuff is important not only for admission committees, but for YOU to be exposed to medicine so you can get a better idea if the reality of medicine is something you want to do for the rest of your life.
The academies are just simply not geared toward getting people into medical school. The fact that it CAN be done doesn't bootstrap it into a good idea, IMO.
Also, if you don't mind me asking, what is your experience with military medicine? I still don't know much about what it entails and what that lifestyle will be like.
Short version (you can search my prior posts if you like):
- civilian undergrad
- USUHS for med school (Navy)
- intern year at a Navy hospital
- 3 year GMO tour with the Marines, deployed to Iraq x7 months and Afghanistan x7 months
- anesthesiology residency at a Navy hospital
- 4 years into a staff tour now, with another deployment to Afghanistan x7 months
Say I went to a state school for free, used HSPS for med school, and then served my 4 years after residency. I should technically be free around 34ish right?
Payback rules for military sponsored medical education are both complicated and difficult to predict in advance - mainly because you won't know until after medical school if any branch of service will require you to spend GMO time prior to residency, and you don't know now what specialty (residency length) you'll end up picking. Both of these 'maybes' interact in hard to predict ways.
Assuming you're 18 now or soon, one possibility:
- 18-22 undergrad
- 22-26 med school
- 26-27 intern
- 27-30 for a 3-year residency *
- 30-34 payback of HPSP years
* but may be 2-7 depending on specialty +/- fellowship
But it also MIGHT be
- 18-22 undergrad
- 22-26 med school
- 26-27 intern
- 27-30 GMO tour (reducing obligated service from 4 years to 1)
- 30-35 a longer 5-year residency (increasing obligated service from 1 year to 5)
- 35-40 payback for residency obligation
At this point you'll have 14 years of creditable service (med school doesn't count, even on HPSP) ... and you might rationally decide that you ought to stay that extra 6 to collect the retirement check. Now you're 46.
Neither of these are necessarily a bad life, but again, I hope you see that the uncertainty involved tends to push prudent people toward delaying long-term commitments.
Does the military offer any residency program type of things?
In a word, yes, and you should expect to complete residency at a military hospital. (Deferrals for civilian training exist, but they are not reliable, predictable, or even merit-based in many cases.)
In a perfect world, I would be debt free and uncommitted at 34 with 4 years of military experience behind me to give me some experience for the mission field providing that still is my plan. Does that sound feasible because to me it sounds ideal- I have the adventure of military medicine in my early 30s and after my commitment I can either continue military medicine or do the mission field thing or even move on to private practice. All with no debt and no long term commitment.
It might work out that way, it might not. More to the point, you're not the one who controls whether or not it works out that way.
), but if you really want "a life of adventure" i can tell you medicine is not the way to go. if you want to never be unemployed and be able to have a comfortable income to finance some smaller "adventure" habits, it's a pretty good choice though. it all depends on your goals-- some are congruent, some aren't. and if you have plans on a mr/mrs soccer22, they may not necessarily feel the same way in 10-15 years when you are living it up at FOB Dumpster in sub saharan africa or OIF 2.0.
