Should I pursue an MD/MBA during med school?

[YoungMoneyMint]

I’m going to be attending UMich on a full CoA scholarship. As a stipulation of the scholarship, I’m going to be allowed to pursue a free dual degree (Master’s) in any field that I choose. I’m considering an MBA, as I do want to get involved in industry/higher level admin work later on in my career.

Should this be something I pursue, seeing as it’s a free degree from Ross, or should I wait until post-residency to enroll in an executive MBA?

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[mistafab]

I’m going to be attending UMich on a full CoA scholarship. As a stipulation of the scholarship, I’m going to be allowed to pursue a free dual degree (Master’s) in any field that I choose. I’m considering an MBA, as I do want to get involved in industry/higher level admin work later on in my career.

Should this be something I pursue, seeing as it’s a free degree from Ross, or should I wait until post-residency to enroll in an executive MBA?

If you are interested - I recommend you dual-degree. Reason being is it can be hard to fit in an MBA during residency (depending on the specialty), but it can fit pretty well with traditionally structured med schools.

 

[voxveritatisetlucis]

Should not be executive MBA as those are a scam. Value of the degree is in the network and if you aren’t there to network it’s not worth it

 

[pazzer2]

When you wrote "industry" do you mean biotech/pharma? If so then I don't think an MBA will help much. You're much better off getting a science degree (Masters/PhD). A MPH will also be useful.

But if you're interested in hospital administration then I think an MBA will be helpful, especially if its free.

 

[chilly_md]

If it takes an extra year, that's a year of attending salary lost. That's something to consider.

 

[atriablack]

Given that it is free and potentially a degree you are thinking about pursuing later on in your career regardless I think it would be valuable. I know for me personally, I will be considering an MD/MBA for the fact that a combined program condenses a 2 yr masters into 1 yr and an executive MBA later on would be more evening classes and less networking (and I have anecdotally heard it isn't as useful/value adding).

UM advising is pretty good and cross-campus degrees are common. Have you reached out to Ross or UMMed advisors? They will probably be happy to connect you to MD/MBA students + MD/MBA alumni and you could see how they have used their degrees (and privately ask them if they thought it was worth it).

 

[Skindoc83]

U Mich is a real school and if I were in your shoes I would get the MBA. Yes there’s a loss of one year attending salary but one year is insignificant over the course of a career. An MPH is a useless degree for the most part.

 

[retroflex]

The typical advice is to wait until you’re done with training and get your MBA mid-career once you know why you want it and what it will allow you to do career-wise.

But I think you should do it now because 1) it’s a top 10-15 program and 2) it’s free. It’s hard to beat that.

 

[LucidSplash]

I’m doing my MBA now, about 4 years out from finishing fellowship. I also have a friend who is a pediatric surgeon and did an MBA before medical school.

As much as I think med schools need to modernize and include more business education, I tend to be happy that I am doing this now, after I have had some real experience as an attending with the business side of medicine. I think doing it during med school, it would have been more theoretical and less helpful without my clinical experience and I seeing where clinical intersects with business in a real sense.

My friend who did the MBA wishes he had done it later for similar reasons. He did a traditional MBA so was more focused on classic business examples but not necessarily healthcare. I’m doing a physician executive MBA and the class is all physicians and the instruction is geared towards healthcare and used healthcare focused examples etc.

It’s not easy to do another degree after training, so that may be an argument for doing it earlier. I know of a couple places that are allowing Gen surg residents to do an MBA in lieu of research and they might be a good compromise.

Again, med schools need to intentionally incorporate business topics into the curriculum, as the corporatization of medicine is here to stay unless there’s some kind of drastic policial change, which I do not for see in the current environment. But I think real life clinical experience has been invaluable for me in this process so I do not think I would routinely advocate MBA during medical school.

 

[deleted1095841]

My $0.02: rankings are much more important for business schools than med schools. A doctor from a rank #100 med school is still a doctor, and can practice and save lives, and is valued, but an MBA from a rank #100 business school is worthless. I'm not exaggerating.
So, getting a free MBA from a top 10 business school is a good idea, especially when you think you want to get an MBA anyway.

 

[PathNeuroIMorFM]

If it takes an extra year, that's a year of attending salary lost. That's something to consider.

I will never respect this as an argument for taking extra time to start/finish your education. You only get so much time in your early 20s to have fun, pursue interesting things, and take it (relatively) easy. Not saying an MBA in a year is easy, but compared to M2 or M3, it's aight. If people don't want to go directly into the meat grinder of residency and early attending life, then let them. Not to mention this dude will be graduating debt free. He's already going to be nearly 300k ahead of me when I graduate.

When you're on your death bed, are you going to be thinking"man, if only I made an extra 300k in my lifetime" or are you going to be thinking about the wacky **** you got up to during a gap year/research year/masters year where you got a little extra time to yourself to goof off, travel, and learn something different.

 

[LucidSplash]

My $0.02: rankings are much more important for business schools than med schools. A doctor from a rank #100 med school is still a doctor, and can practice and save lives, and is valued, but an MBA from a rank #100 business school is worthless. I'm not exaggerating.
So, getting a free MBA from a top 10 business school is a good idea, especially when you think you want to get an MBA anyway.

I don’t think MBA school rank matters as much in healthcare leadership as it does in other fields.

 

[chilly_md]

When you're on your death bed, are you going to be thinking"man, if only I made an extra 300k in my lifetime" or are you going to be thinking about the wacky **** you got up to during a gap year/research year/masters year where you got a little extra time to yourself to goof off, travel, and learn something different.

Neither to be honest, though an extra 300k sounds nice. Some people prefer getting to work as soon as possible and the OP is only pondering it because they think they might be interested in admin work later.

 

[ChordaEpiphany]

Not saying an MBA in a year is easy,

If you won't say it, I will. An MBA year will be easy. The hardest part of an MBA is pretending to care when your classmate from a wildly wealthy family talks your head off about his international vacation plans during the 4th bougie social of the week.

I haven't done it myself, but I lived with a guy who went to a T10 MBA program. I don't think he was sober for a moment of those two years, and he came out of it with a job paying $200K on a track with a ceiling that goes well above seven figures.

The bigger consideration for OP is the direction they want to go. Want to be a hospital admin? Do the MBA. Thinking of other potential pathways, like venture capital, biotechnology/pharma, consulting, etc...? consider getting the MBA afterwards at HBS or Wharton, but don't do executive as the value is in networking. Cost of education is irrelevant on these tracks.

 

[YoungMoneyMint]

Thanks for the input everyone! I don’t think I’m going to be interested in biotech/pharma, as I’m not a big fan of research.

Would there be any benefit in me pursuing an MBA at an M7 later on vs Ross, with that in mind? Because I’ve been hearing a lot of conflicting information.

 

[aldol16]

If it's totally free, I would consider the MBA. It's a valuable experience with the caveat that you may not be able to capitalize on the networking you get there until later in your career. The plus side is that it's easy to do an MBA now when you have time compared to later when you have a career, family, and patient panel. I think the full MBA programs are more valuable in terms of experience than weekend EMBA programs or similar.

But you should always remember that there are always unmentioned costs of MBAs that are basically the price of networking. You'll eat out a lot, go on trips, etc. All that costs money even though it's not directly related to academics.

 

[Anakinmemer]

Thanks for the input everyone! I don’t think I’m going to be interested in biotech/pharma, as I’m not a big fan of research.

Would there be any benefit in me pursuing an MBA at an M7 later on vs Ross, with that in mind? Because I’ve been hearing a lot of conflicting information.

It entirely depends on what you're trying to break into. Finance has the steepest prestige curve and M7 is absolutely an advantage. Some hedge funds/prop shops distinguish even further and only take from Harvard, Wharton, Stanford.

Consulting will generally be more lenient but M7 definitely still helps.

Remember MBA class sizes are much larger and you're already out of the top 5000 graduates when you're out of the top 7 schools. Depending on the job market, the amount of high paying jobs available to MBA grads can greatly fluctuate (it's not great right now and even M7 grads don't have a guaranteed 200k)

TLDR: If you want an MBA for the skills Ross is a great option. If you're chasing money and want to be at the highest paying firms a top school would definitely help, but it's not like you're out of the running coming from Ross

 

[deleted1139574]

So how did you get a full COA scholarship from Umich? That's crazy, sort of jealous haha

 

[YoungMoneyMint]

So how did you get a full COA scholarship from Umich? That's crazy, sort of jealous haha

A lot of things came together haha. I had a 3.9+/520+, a lot of service and research, a compelling background (first-Gen, low-income etc.) and I was classified as URM for them.

I think my app fit their mission pretty well and I had a dope interview, so they made an offer w/ a Dean’s scholarship pretty early on in the cycle. I used other T10/T15 As and interview invites to negotiate my way to full CoA. Still feels absolutely unreal though!

 

[deleted1139574]

A lot of things came together haha. I had a 3.9+/520+, a lot of service and research, a compelling background (first-Gen, low-income etc.) and I was classified as URM for them.

I think my app fit their mission pretty well and I had a dope interview, so they made an offer w/ a Dean’s scholarship pretty early on in the cycle. I used other T10/T15 As and interview invites to negotiate my way to full CoA. Still feels absolutely unreal though!

good job!!