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markthedoctor
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IB benefits:
- 6 figure salary right away then raises (120k, 180k, 250k, ....)
- exponential raises every year and big bonuses depending on how the bank does
- a lot of great exit opportunities
- if you manage to stay long at a single bank long enough, you can have opportunity to get promoted to a MD (managing director); and they easily make a couple million per year
Medicine benefits:
- good salary; not as good as IB but ranges anywhere from 150k (pediatricians) to 550k (dermatopathologists)
- very safe job; you can't get "fired" by anyone unless you seriously screw up your patients or do something unethical
- you can work for a longer time; a doctor earns the most when they are old b/c they have a lot of experience (not applicable to some fields like surgery obviously)
- you get respected by everyone because the general public thinks you save lives on a regular basis; they also think highly of you and think you are very smart and compassionate
IB downfalls:
- 100+hrs/week
- many IBers have to rely on weird activities to get through the day and un-stress (smoke weed, drink a lot, one night stands, etc etc)
- nobody will respect you because the general public believes all you do all day is legally steal people's money
- by the time you become 40-50 and haven't been promoted to a managing director or related position, the banks are going to replaced you with fresh new 20 year old ivy graduates.
- you stare at a computer all day looking at numbers and preparing excel and powerpoint presentations
Medicine downfalls:
- medical school debt
- intern and residency years are easily 80-100 hrs/week.
- malpractice insurance + taxes basically cut 50% of your base salary
- under Obamacare, nurses are going to start replacing primary care physicians
- you cannot start having a real life until your late 20s or early 30s depending on when you start medical school
* Disclaimer: these are all generalizations; a lot of exceptions exists
However, let me just say this regarding IB vs medicine: (n=1)
I have a good friend who will be graduating this semester with me. We met freshman year and were both pre-med in the beginning; we attend a USNWR top 10 college. Sophomore year, we both took o-chem1+2; my friend received two C's in orgo while I got two A's. My friend dropped out of the pre-med track and majored in finance/economics shortly after.
Right now, we are both doing quite well. I have been accepted to an US allopathic school and my friend has a job at an IB (starting salary $120k) lined up right after graduation. However, I ask you this: Why was my friend pre-med in the beginning? Why did he pursue IB only after he knew he couldn't keep up the grades to continue on the pre-med track?
- 6 figure salary right away then raises (120k, 180k, 250k, ....)
- exponential raises every year and big bonuses depending on how the bank does
- a lot of great exit opportunities
- if you manage to stay long at a single bank long enough, you can have opportunity to get promoted to a MD (managing director); and they easily make a couple million per year
Medicine benefits:
- good salary; not as good as IB but ranges anywhere from 150k (pediatricians) to 550k (dermatopathologists)
- very safe job; you can't get "fired" by anyone unless you seriously screw up your patients or do something unethical
- you can work for a longer time; a doctor earns the most when they are old b/c they have a lot of experience (not applicable to some fields like surgery obviously)
- you get respected by everyone because the general public thinks you save lives on a regular basis; they also think highly of you and think you are very smart and compassionate
IB downfalls:
- 100+hrs/week
- many IBers have to rely on weird activities to get through the day and un-stress (smoke weed, drink a lot, one night stands, etc etc)
- nobody will respect you because the general public believes all you do all day is legally steal people's money
- by the time you become 40-50 and haven't been promoted to a managing director or related position, the banks are going to replaced you with fresh new 20 year old ivy graduates.
- you stare at a computer all day looking at numbers and preparing excel and powerpoint presentations
Medicine downfalls:
- medical school debt
- intern and residency years are easily 80-100 hrs/week.
- malpractice insurance + taxes basically cut 50% of your base salary
- under Obamacare, nurses are going to start replacing primary care physicians
- you cannot start having a real life until your late 20s or early 30s depending on when you start medical school
* Disclaimer: these are all generalizations; a lot of exceptions exists
However, let me just say this regarding IB vs medicine: (n=1)
I have a good friend who will be graduating this semester with me. We met freshman year and were both pre-med in the beginning; we attend a USNWR top 10 college. Sophomore year, we both took o-chem1+2; my friend received two C's in orgo while I got two A's. My friend dropped out of the pre-med track and majored in finance/economics shortly after.
Right now, we are both doing quite well. I have been accepted to an US allopathic school and my friend has a job at an IB (starting salary $120k) lined up right after graduation. However, I ask you this: Why was my friend pre-med in the beginning? Why did he pursue IB only after he knew he couldn't keep up the grades to continue on the pre-med track?
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This is a weird activity? Oh, and fyi, a US News ranking means jack.
OP, if you go into banking, we'll have to start calling you "bro." 😉
USNWR matters a lot for IB in that banks will only hire exclusively from the Ivies + Ivy comparables (rank 1-15) on USNWR. Only exception is if you have family/friend connections.This is a weird activity? Oh, and fyi, a US News ranking means jack.
OP, if you go into banking, we'll have to start calling you "bro." 😉
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Do you want to make others lives better, or worse?
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Just read this:
Unless you transfer to Harvard, Princeton, Stern, or Wharton, you will not even receive an interview.
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Just read this:
Unless you transfer to Harvard, Princeton, Stern, or Wharton, you will not even receive an interview.
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Someone needs to rein in their expectations. 10-20 million a year for ibanking or medicine? 
Not by a long shot.
Don't take this the wrong way, but if you are dead set on keeping both medicine and ibanking an option, you most likely won't get there by going to a community college. It's all about prestige in ibanking. I don't know how many CC transfers the Ivies take, but it doesn't seem likely.
Not by a long shot.Don't take this the wrong way, but if you are dead set on keeping both medicine and ibanking an option, you most likely won't get there by going to a community college. It's all about prestige in ibanking. I don't know how many CC transfers the Ivies take, but it doesn't seem likely.
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It sounds as though finance and/or economics is your main interest. It seems as though you're drawn to medicine for the sole reason that it is likely to bring you a stable income, and now because the topic really interests you.
Have you ever considered a career in finance or economics that isn't quite as cut-throat as investment banking?
Have you ever considered a career in finance or economics that isn't quite as cut-throat as investment banking?
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You weren't using US News in the context of hires coming out of school; it was inserted & came across as faux credibility for the above. Even with the economy slowly becoming better, internships are acting as a gateway for those jobs, not OCI's confined to the northeast.
and you only get those internships if you are attending an ivy/ivy comparable school highly ranked on USNWR. Or if your parents are rich and knows people..
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Good luck, but i don't think you'll make it to be honest.
It is absolutely crazy how much I can relate to this. I'm currently a freshman enrolled at a state school and last year I was deciding between IB and medicine as careers. I applied to basically all ivy's and got into none of them. However, I did get into UChicago and Stern but they aid they offered me was terrible to the point at which I realized that they weren't a feasible option considering I was going to graduate school either way. My dad ended up in the hospital because of some health complications and as a result I decided to volunteer at the hospital. I enjoyed being in the hospital, I felt confident, smart, and most of all myself (Weird considering it's volunteering). I basically knew that medicine was for me.
I opted to go my state school and pursue medicine.
On the other hand, I have a lot of friends graduating from CUNYs that are getting internships at JP Morgan and other banks albeit they aren't necessarily IB's.
Yes it's true that you'll likely lose the job to an Ivy League Grad but if you hustle hard, you're sure to end up on top. IB like practically all of business is networking. If you can build those networks then you're golden.
Good luck!
I opted to go my state school and pursue medicine.
On the other hand, I have a lot of friends graduating from CUNYs that are getting internships at JP Morgan and other banks albeit they aren't necessarily IB's.
Yes it's true that you'll likely lose the job to an Ivy League Grad but if you hustle hard, you're sure to end up on top. IB like practically all of business is networking. If you can build those networks then you're golden.
Good luck!
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First I disagree that only neurosurgeons break 80 hours a week. During my intern year, at a Program that was more or less in compliance with duty hours, I probably averaged 75 hours a week and broke 80 many many times. The ACGME rules provide for monthly averaging, so you absolutely can go over those numbers, eg 60 hours one week and 100 hours the next is totally fine, even if your program is honest with their time cards, which not all are.
Many attendings see their hours jump dramatically once they complete residency. Suddenly their liability is their own, and there is no ACGME telling them they can't come in after they reached 80 hours. In some fields attendings don't get post call days so even if you had to come in all night, you aren't going home that next day. Working forty hours in a row early in the week more or less guarantees you are going over 80 hours by the weeks end. A good friend of mine who is a new attending reports that his average weekly hours jumped from around 70 hours a week to over 100 in his first year as an attending. It's a med student myth that your hours are controllable once you become an attending. Most people join practices and as the low man on the totem pole bear the brunt of night and weekend call. Even some of the lifestyle fields referenced aren't as lifestyle as are suggested.
As to the OPs question, don't go into medicine for the stable income. That's easily the worst reason to choose your career. If you are focused on money, go into business, not a Profession. medicine will take four years of professional school and another 3-7 years of residency and maybe another 1-2 years of fellowship before you reach those cushy incomes, if they even exist by then. If you aren't enjoying yourself, over a decade is way too long to push through. It's a Prison sentence for some. The time value of money and opportunity costs of foregoing an income for so long makes whatever you earn in the distant future equivalent to pennies on the dollar anyhow, so you earn less in medicine because you dont earn it for a decade -- it's a fools gambit. If i offered you $100 today or the promise to pay you $100 ten years from now, which would you prefer? Obviously the latter isn't really worth $100, and if you tried to sell that futures contract, you'd get a Lot less. And that's what the income in medicine is -- a non guaranteed futures contract that isn't worth face value. So to the extent money is driving your decision, which it is or you wouldn't even be considering banking (these fields are not similar) you shouldn't choose medicine. Unless you truly love it and cant picture doing anything else, the opportunity cost is way too high for dollar-centric people.
And your point #3 is naive and short sighted. Yes Nurses are currently filling a gap, but do you really think they'll stop there? The more people feel comfortable seeing the NP at the local Minute Clinic for their primary care needs, the fewer spots for primary care physicians there will be ten years from now. everybody in medicine is concerned about this -- we are losing market share to a competitor we cant possibly compete with on price point, and a government that is looking for ways to make healthcare "affordable" -- you do the math. If you don't see this as a very big deal you are probably the only one...
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The only people that make the sort of money you are referring to in IB are Ivy League grads. They don't care about how tough your childhood is or what your credentials are, they want to see your pedigree. You can get into a lower tier IB firm if you work hard, but that will take a lot of effort. You'll never work for the big firms though.
http://www.ivygateblog.com/2011/01/...outh-morgan-stanley-just-wants-to-be-friends/
They don't even want you if you went to Dartmouth. Good luck if you went to community college. (I was a dropout that went to CC, so I'm saying this as a realist and someone who looked into many of the things you are looking into, but then realized I don't care about money because I don't do anything with it so I picked the career that would make me happiest.)
Medicine is a very real possibility for you though. Just don't do it for the money.
If money is such a motivating factor, I wouldn't go into medicine. If you want to help people, I wouldn't go into finance.
In terms of IB recruitment, I go to Cornell, which does accept a good amount of community college transfers into the contract colleges (Agriculture & Life Sciences, Human Ecology, Industrial & Labor Relations). The undergraduate business program at Cornell is in the Ag school, but you can also do business in Industrial & Labor Relations (ILR). It's much easier to be accepted as a transfer into ILR than AEM (applied economics and management).
In terms of IB recruitment, I go to Cornell, which does accept a good amount of community college transfers into the contract colleges (Agriculture & Life Sciences, Human Ecology, Industrial & Labor Relations). The undergraduate business program at Cornell is in the Ag school, but you can also do business in Industrial & Labor Relations (ILR). It's much easier to be accepted as a transfer into ILR than AEM (applied economics and management).
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Even at my "easy" prelim medicine internship I've gone over 80 hours 1-2 times a month on wards or ICU. I don't always get the mandatory 8 hours off between shifts and I have it better than most interns.
Rads residents may not "work" long hours, but they do quite a bit of home studying (more than most residents.) As a non-surgeon/cardiologist your life "should" improve as an attending, but it's not always the case.
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to get hired as an investment banker making that kind of money you NEED to graduate top of your class at HYPS to even have a chance. do yourself a favor and don't decide what you want to do before you start taking classes for both
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We all probably had that hunch, but why not let him find that out on his own? I feel like the people around him IRL should be telling him these things. Or maybe he's here because they are telling him this these things and he wants to hear something different. I don't know...
D
deleted407021
You made a 2 year necrobump. OP's probably a sophomore somewhere right now and his account has been deleted, so he's probably moved on lol
