If you are in a state with only one pharm school, chances are you might have to apply to the private 30k schools. When including food and shelther, thats about $200,000 after four years. MDs leave school with $250,000 in debt, and make 2-5x as much money.
Why did some of you resort to going the private route? Even if you are making 100k per year after graduation, that leaves you with 5-10 years of loan repayments.
whoa whoa buddy, before you start posting random stuff, be sure to research it and back it up. Making random posts like this is frown upon here in SDN. I dont even understand why you are comparing a pharmd to a MD and not some other degree.
First of all, the 30k tuition usually applies to the last 2 or 4 years of your education. Pre pharmacy tuition is usually less in most private schools. This dramatically reduces the average debt to about 120k. Most pharmacy students have less than that and can come out with below 100k debt. This is due to scholarships, financial aid, etc, depending on your state and what the government consider your pharmacy school as. For example, my first four years (I am in a 6 year program), were considered as undergraduate and my last 2 years graduate. Hence I got substantial government aid for the first 4 years, with NYS partially paying for my 5th year.
For a MD degree, an applicant has to go through 4 years of undergraduate, and then 4 years of graduate, plus residency. The average tuition of the medical degree (the last 4 years) of a private school is usually at least 35k, and can go up to below 50k. NYU school of medicine is 41k. After you factor in board, books, and other expenses, the cost can skyrocket. Hence their debt is an average of 250k when they are getting out of school. If they have taken out loans for their first 4 years, it can skyrocket to 350k. This is speaking with the assumption that there is mimimum help from the school, the government, and from their parents.
In lost wages due to being in school alone (something we all learn in our economics class), we get technically "pay off our debts". In addition, for someone who wants to open up their own practice, they have to wait a few years for it to be off the ground.
In terms of loan repayment, everyone who takes out government loans will usually end up paying it in 20 years. There is no exception as repaying the loan early will cost you money (early repayment fees). The government will get you one way or another.
