I'm going to med school in lieu of banking or being an inter-dealer broker. At a boutique bank (not GS/MS/JPM) first year comp is about 100K, this is at a small boutique with 10 to 20 people, where comp tends to be the lowest. In 10 years time you're usually a VP and should at a small boutique make 300 to 500k, as a Managing Director, it is hard to say where I worked last summer (a middle market firm, that was probably 2nd or 3rd biggest in a major non-NYC/LA/SF/Chicago city) it varied from 400K to almost broaching 8 figures. Bankers work as hard as physicians if not more so, analyst hours make a gen surg residency look cush. Still in many ways the people who enter IB are comparable in terms of talent as to those that go into medicine. People also scramble to post near 4.0s, get internships and network, in many regards it is incredibly similar to premeds for those gunning for spots in banking. Also when you look to hourly pay for medicine that's when you get the real shock an average pediatrician makes about 150K, they do this working 48 weeks a year, 60 hours a week, this is an hourly rate of $52.08, not that good. Worse yet is the hourly wage as a resident 45K at 80 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, a princely $11.25 an hour.
