You also wouldn't be able to quit until that obligation is up. This is why the MDSSP and STRAP are currently unpopular.
Boy, and there is the rub, isn't it?
If you take MDSSP plus do a four year residency with STRAP, you owe 12 years as an attending.
I'm
extremely hesitant to recommend any program that stacks on those kind of years to someone starting medical school, because it requires you to know what you want to be doing 20 years from now.
Visualizing what you'll be happy doing in 20 years is hard for anyone, but it's particularly hard for someone just starting medical school. The fact is, you work on your statement of purpose and polish your interview preparing for med school to the point that you actually kid yourself into thinking you have a vision of how you'll end up.
But it's all smoke. Most folks have very different ideas about what kind of medicine they want to practice as they make it through medical school. Most students (literally, most students) end up in a different specialty than the one they were convinced they'd do when they started.
This is compounded by the fact that most students are starting off in their mid-20's, which is a point in our lives when, frankly, we have a pretty poor vision of the men and women we'll become. If you doubt this, talk to someone in their mid-40's and ask if they are the sort of person they thought they'd be 20 years ago. Prepare for laughter.
I've had a wonderful time in the National Guard and do not regret my decision at all. I will finish up my obligation 18 months after finishing residency and can use this time to decide whether or not I want to stay in indefinitely. My intent is to stay in, but I am
very happy that this will be a choice. Going through the stress, triumphs, defeats, challenges, and romantic/professional/financial life changes knowing that I had 20 years of obligation to the military to burn through would have been, to put it mildly, a bummer.
So my un-asked-for advice to anyone out there is to consider the Guard very seriously, but to take it in baby steps. If you take MDSSP alone, you will end up owing 8 years. Same with STRAP. Unless you're prior service and know exactly what you're getting into, I'd consider the idea of doing either/or. And STRAP has a couple of big benefits over MDSSP: the ability to take HPLRP as a third year resident and the fact that you start after medical school, when you'll have a much better idea of who you are, where you are, what you'll be doing, and who you'll be with.
But enough from the peanut gallery...