total medical school debt

[surfingphd]

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Hi,

I've been looking at the average medical school debt for different schools, such as ucsd, ucsf, and stanford. All of these schools report that their average graduate leaves with around $80,000 debt (or less!). I've always been under the impression that I'll graduate with around $100,000 - $200,000 in debt. Am I missing something??

FYI, I don't anticipate having any help from my parents with medical school since they already helped me during grad school. I'll be working as a healthcare/biotech consultant for the ~2 yrs before I start med school and I should be able to save up around 80-100K before I matriculate (I'll have a PhD in a few months, so I'll get paid more)

For reference:
http://med.stanford.edu/md/financial_aid/debt_management.html
http://meded.ucsd.edu/asa/financial_aid/faq/
http://www.medschool.ucsf.edu/admissions/tuition/index.aspx

 

[yadayadadude]

Average debt isn't terribly meaningful. It includes people with no debt (MSTPers, trust funds, parents picking up the tab, working spouses, military) and people who are able to borrow less due to their specific circumstances. Average debt does not reflect average cost of attendance.

Having said that, debt at Stanford is low because financial aid there is very generous.

ETA: remember, too, that the numbers on those pages are for graduates from a couple of years ago. So they entered medical school seven or eight years ago. If you enter in two years, given that medical educations costs have out-paced inflation for years, you'd expect your class to have roughly double the average debt listed in your links, assuming everything else stayed the same.

 

[TMP-SMX]

I live at home and only get sub/unsub staffords and I'll have roughly 150k by the end of 4 years in loans plus uncapitalized interest on the unsubs.

 

[potato head]

hi guys. i thought i would bump this thread.

i'm planning on attending med school this fall.

my CoA is estimated to be $35K per year. ~$11K will be taken out for tuition/fees, but i'm only intending to use ~$14-15K/yr on living expenses (or so i hope).

using some convenient online calculators, my total debt will be about $92,000 by the time i graduate. if i repay the loan over 10 years, i will be paying ~$32,000 in interest, leaving a grand total of $124,000 debt paid.

how about you guys? what are you debts looking like?

will your interest be eating away at you like mine will? 😉

 

[TMP-SMX]

Lets just say you are in much better shape than a vast majority of medical students. My tuition/fees alone is almost as much as your CoA and I'm at a public school. Not including the

M1: $33,500
M2: $28,000 (minus $9000 for the scholarship and including $5000 Perkins)
M3: $33,500 (minus $9500 for the scholarship)
M4: Estimated $50000 (Hoping I can avoid getting grad plus and get $9500 for the scholarship and receive the normal $40,500 staffords)
Total Principal: $145,000

 

[potato head]

my total debt will be about $92,000 by the time i graduate. if i repay the loan over 10 years, i will be paying ~$32,000 in interest, leaving a grand total of $124,000 debt paid.

maybe i'll just think of it as having a pesky small house... that i won't be able to get rid of for another 14 years. 🙁

 

[dragonfly99]

potatohead
that's not bad debt at all, for a graduating medical student.
I'm not sure that paying it all of in 10 years will be very easy...well, will depend on your specialty. If you do any extra research years or a long residency+fellowship, you'll be earning resident wages for most of that 10 years.

 

[IzzyMD09]

where only the rich get richer, and their children get into and graduate from medical school without overwhelming debt,

Applying to medical school alone including prep courses, secondary application fees, travel and everything together costs about 10, 000 dollars, and thats if you get in on the first try.

Medical Schools on average are roughly 150K for TUITION ONLY

what about medical instruments, travel between hospitals, food, living expenses, bills, travelling to electives, paying out the rear end for steps 1, 2, and CS, applying for residency, travelling for residency interviews, relocating to your new residency area (of course if you get in on the first try)

you are actually looking at something closer to 250 THOUSAND DOLLARS

I think if America is so concerned with the decline in family physicians, because all the poor people want to go into specialties d/t the quarter million dollar burden they have, they should force all children of physicians who got into medical school and who dont have to rely on loans to live and educate themselves into general practice and deny them from entering specialties.

We do live in the one-party Socialist Republic of the United States, might as well start acting like it!

 

[Poitiers2]

The average US medical graduate ends up somewhere around 130-140K in debt (or it did a year or two ago). With the high cost of living at places like San Diego and Palo Alto, I'd imagine the average debt is ever greater at those respective schools.

 

[Poitiers2]

where only the rich get richer, and their children get into and graduate from medical school without overwhelming debt!

Agree with #2. As for #1, well, we live in a consumer lifestyle society. I know plenty of middle-class families who saved hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of blowing it all on fun, games, eating out and big screen televisions. And I know some with similar incomes who are up a creek when it comes time to retire.

That said, hardly anyone can afford to throw the cost of a medical education on top of their parents' finances. It's become insanely expensive, particularly private schools.

Social engineering and an abuse of the availability of federal funds have led us to this point, and it just seems to get worse every year.

 

[TMP-SMX]

The average US medical graduate ends up somewhere around 130-140K in debt (or it did a year or two ago). With the high cost of living at places like San Diego and Palo Alto, I'd imagine the average debt is ever greater at those respective schools.

Even for individuals starting medical school this year, their debt will be much higher and at a much higher interest rate than the very low rates of when the graduating seniors in those surveys graduated. Tuitions have really gone up. Also, it doesn't take into account people with scholarships or other sources of tuition payment. So the average person who gets all loans will be paying much higher than the average.

 

[potato head]

So the average person who gets all loans will be paying much higher than the average.

i fall into this category. i'll be almost completely reliant on loans, so although my tuition is only 11K per year, i end up with ~124K in paid debt after 10 years of repayment.

 

[nontrdgsbuiucmd]

i fall into this category. i'll be almost completely reliant on loans, so although my tuition is only 11K per year, i end up with ~124K in paid debt after 10 years of repayment.

maybe I'm missing something, but here goes, Mr/Ms Potato:

take out 35K per year starting in yr 1, cost of school goes up 5% per year (Colorado's saying to assume 7% per year increase, but that seems unrealistic to me; let's say your school goes up 5%.

yr 1 costs 25K
yr 2 costs 26.2K
yr 3 costs 27.5K
yr 4 costs 28.9K

borrow money that accrues interest at 6.8%, by my math you've borrowed 146K and total outstanding amount at end of yr 4 is 126.8K.

Enter residency -- if you were on a 10 yr repay plan @ 6.8%, you're paying $1,459 per month, or 17,517 per year -- but I'd seen typical residents' salaries in the 45-50K range -- take out taxes & you're at 35-39K takehome, less 17K loan payments? you'd be living at around twice the poverty level under this plan --

Another suggestion would be to do the IBR, pay a low amount of loan pmts during PGY years, then more over the next number of years. I'd suggest that, even if you think you'd be OK paying back loans really fast, you may meet an SO that does not feel that being dead broke for most of 10 yrs in order to have massive discretionary income after that makes as much sense as spreading your debt over the many years you'll earn a great deal -- and paying more when you earn more.

 

[potato head]

thanks for the headsup nontrdgsbuiucmd (sp? haha). my math was obviously an estimate, but after browsing through your calculations, i'll just point out a few things.

1) i'm only planning (hoping) to take out 26-28K per year, total. 11K for tuition, 14-15K for living expenses. and i'll be trying my best to cut down the latter amount. my CoA is ~$35K, but i don't - by any means - plan on taking the full amount.

2) this may be difficult, but i plan on working as many summers/breaks as possible in order to cut down on my total debt by graduation. i also have money in savings that cuts this amount down further.

3) i realize my repayment bills will be large. a consideration (that you mentioned) is paying increasing amounts over the course of 10 years or so. i believe the increase in total-debt due to interest will only be a few hundred (or thousand) dollars more with my debt size. this doesn't seem to bad, but i'm a stingy person, so i'll only want to consider this if my residency income ends up only around $30-35K/year.

4) if i make something more around the amount of $45K/year, i'll be fine with the payback amount you listed. i know what it's like making only 30K/year (before taxes), and at one point, i used to remove $750 per month to pocket into savings. with the amount remaining, i actually felt i had a surplus of money (but i'm tight with money anyways). currently, i only make 16K/year (before taxes), pay rent, and manage to survive (granted, i live on $2 meals & haven't bought new clothes in over a year). but i'm actually fine with this. i'm getting old & i sorta pride myself on how i manage to make things work.

5) this really isn't a consideration for me, but since it was brought up, my SO is okay with my lifestyle and even offered to take up some of the debt repayment burden. but, really, i won't be factoring that into my plans.

maybe I'm missing something, but here goes, Mr/Ms Potato:

take out 35K per year starting in yr 1, cost of school goes up 5% per year (Colorado's saying to assume 7% per year increase, but that seems unrealistic to me; let's say your school goes up 5%.

yr 1 costs 25K
yr 2 costs 26.2K
yr 3 costs 27.5K
yr 4 costs 28.9K

borrow money that accrues interest at 6.8%, by my math you've borrowed 146K and total outstanding amount at end of yr 4 is 126.8K.

Enter residency -- if you were on a 10 yr repay plan @ 6.8%, you're paying $1,459 per month, or 17,517 per year -- but I'd seen typical residents' salaries in the 45-50K range -- take out taxes & you're at 35-39K takehome, less 17K loan payments? you'd be living at around twice the poverty level under this plan --

Another suggestion would be to do the IBR, pay a low amount of loan pmts during PGY years, then more over the next number of years. I'd suggest that, even if you think you'd be OK paying back loans really fast, you may meet an SO that does not feel that being dead broke for most of 10 yrs in order to have massive discretionary income after that makes as much sense as spreading your debt over the many years you'll earn a great deal -- and paying more when you earn more.

 

[Haole]

My school only considers government originated loans when compiling the average amount of debt per student. They do not take private loans, or loans from other sources into account. My government loans account for roughly 68% of my total debt coming out of school. This makes the "average" very misleading and is not the whole truth. I would be surprised if other schools did it any different.

 

[nontrdgsbuiucmd]

thanks for the headsup nontrdgsbuiucmd (sp? haha). my math was obviously an estimate, but after browsing through your calculations, i'll just point out a few things.

1) i'm only planning (hoping) to take out 26-28K per year, total. 11K for tuition, 14-15K for living expenses. and i'll be trying my best to cut down the latter amount. my CoA is ~$35K, but i don't - by any means - plan on taking the full amount.

2) this may be difficult, but i plan on working as many summers/breaks as possible in order to cut down on my total debt by graduation. i also have money in savings that cuts this amount down further.

3) i realize my repayment bills will be large. a consideration (that you mentioned) is paying increasing amounts over the course of 10 years or so. i believe the increase in total-debt due to interest will only be a few hundred (or thousand) dollars more with my debt size. this doesn't seem to bad, but i'm a stingy person, so i'll only want to consider this if my residency income ends up only around $30-35K/year.

4) if i make something more around the amount of $45K/year, i'll be fine with the payback amount you listed. i know what it's like making only 30K/year (before taxes), and at one point, i used to remove $750 per month to pocket into savings. with the amount remaining, i actually felt i had a surplus of money (but i'm tight with money anyways). currently, i only make 16K/year (before taxes), pay rent, and manage to survive (granted, i live on $2 meals & haven't bought new clothes in over a year). but i'm actually fine with this. i'm getting old & i sorta pride myself on how i manage to make things work.

5) this really isn't a consideration for me, but since it was brought up, my SO is okay with my lifestyle and even offered to take up some of the debt repayment burden. but, really, i won't be factoring that into my plans.

Hi potato, yes you got my "name" right, it's a combo of schools I'd attended..

Sorry my math was off on the "total borrowed", that should have said amount borrowed (not counting interest) is 107.7K, I got up to the 126.8 debt at graduation by adding interest each year @ 6.8%; technically the 8,500 subsidized stafford loan would have interest deferred while you're in school in any case although all borrowed amount above this would incur interest while you're in school; I just redid the calc making that adjustment & am seeing debt at graduation at around 117.7K instead of 126.8K. I did this by taking yr 1 total borrowing of 25K - 8.5K stafford loan amount * 1.068 to account for 6.8% interest on that amount from end of year 1 through end of yr 2 which is 17,622. Add this to yr 2 costs which have increased by 5%, subtract out stafford loan amount which does not have interest paid by you while in school, add the 2 together & * 1.068.. this is what finance people get paid to do; (I'm definitely not saying this is interesting for most people)

Sounds like you're OK doing this with a lower income than I'd be comfortable with, more power to you; I'd rather have less time & more money, or more borrowing and a smoother lifetime consumption pattern if I can't work much while in school, but fully understand there are no "right" answers to that question.

re: working over breaks -- I don't know how holiday break works; there may be a handful of days there; the only summer off is between M1 & M2; I've heard of various plans that pay a 3-5K stipend for these few months which would definitely help a bit. Some people do work while in school, plenty of threads about this and if you ask the typical med student if they're studying Fri & Saturday night (when some other students may work) I'd bet I know the answer. where there's a will there's a way

 

[potato head]

I just redid the calc making that adjustment & am seeing debt at graduation at around 117.7K instead of 126.8K.

thanks for the help 🙂

i'm probably not one to try to make very accurate figures, but i do have money in savings (which i wasn't really disclosing) that may drop the figure more to the estimate i posted earlier.

my point, more or less, is that the interest payment is killer.

 

[TMP-SMX]

Don't give yourself an ulcer over this. Enjoy your summer and play around with the numbers if you'd like to figure out each year. Base the amount you take out on a real budget and not fear about how much you will be repaying.

nontrad was right about calculations:
It's slightly more accurate to figure it by disbursement (biannually) rather than annually because that is how you receive it and interest accrues during deferment. It is actually monthly, but the different won't be that much until you actually enter repayment. So figuring 28.5k per year of staffords with 8500 of that being subsidized (10,000 unsub per disbursement and 4250 sub during disbursement):

M1 1st semester: 10,000+4250 =14250
M1 2nd semester: 10,000+4250+10,000X0.068/2=14250+340
M2 1st semester: 10,000+4250+10,000X0.068/2*2=14250+680
M2 2nd semester: 10,000+4250+10,000X0.068/2*3=14250+1020
M3 1st semester: 10,000+4250+10,000X0.068/2*4=14250+1360
M3 2nd semester: 10,000+4250+10,000X0.068/2*5=14250+1700
M4 1st semester: 10,000+4250+10,000X0.068/2*6=14250+2040
M4 2nd semester: 10,000+4250+10,000X0.068/2*7=14250+2380
Sixth month grace period: 10,000X0.068/2*8=2720

Total when entering repayment=14250*8=114,000 principal + 12,240 interest = $126,240

Difference between our calculations is that I assumed you took out $28,500 per year without accounting for tuition increases or increases in the cost of living for longer school years. I also had interest accrue biannually. Either way you get the point.

 

[DrBender79]

Don't give yourself an ulcer over this.

Wouldn't that be nice... I can't stop worrying about the $302,000 student loan balance waiting for me in 2011! Forbearance here I come

 

[EM2BE]

where only the rich get richer, and their children get into and graduate from medical school without overwhelming debt,

Applying to medical school alone including prep courses, secondary application fees, travel and everything together costs about 10, 000 dollars, and thats if you get in on the first try.



you are actually looking at something closer to 250 THOUSAND DOLLARS

I don't know how you figure 10,000 for apps. I paid maybe 1000 total (including MCAT costs). I didn't mess with prep courses. I didn't pay but for a few secondary apps. I only traveled to one school. I know this is the minimum, but that's what you do when you are poor and want to go to school (no, parents did not help - I used money I was earning working 50 hrs a week + going to school full time). The poor can get in but they will have to work at least twice as hard.

And, you are very correct about the 250,000 dollars for those at private schools (my tuition is somewhere around 40,000 for this year - my last year so I just signed the papers without looking because there's nothing I can do about it at this point). Everything is on me (again no parental assistance).

Responsibility with money can get a person what they want/need in the future. Yes, we have to pay back the amount owed, with all the interest. You won't make enough money in residency to make the payments for even the 30 year loan if you have as much debt as I will have. Like said above, don't give yourself an ulcer. You will achieve what is for many of you a life-long dream and will be able to pay what you owe when the time is right. I'm not saying to not attempt to pay anything during residency, but don't push it so hard that your own family has to suffer more than necessary.

 

[rpkall]

I think the real question is how to handle your med school debt load while in residency... Most attending physicians can make payments on loans even up to $250,000 on a monthly basis over even a 10 year repayment plan, and still have money leftover for other expenses.

If you go into a reasonable specialty where your income is $150,000, according to www.paycheckcity.com (which is a great site, by the way), that leaves 12,500 monthly gross, and about $7500.00 take home per month after the government (federal, state) is through stealing your money to give it to General Motors and Citibank. If you contribute to 401k, kids college fund, health insurance, etc, it's obviously less.

For a $140,000 loan at a passable interest rate of 5%, payments are about $1500/month over 10 years (you're paying like 40,000 in interest or something, BTW).

That leaves $6,000 per month for living after loan payments. Which is definitely doable.

You run into problems if you don't make any interest-only payments on that $140,000 while in residency. Instead of a principal of 140k, it could go up as high as $180,000 or higher during a 5 yr. residency, depending on your interest rate and terms of the loan.

Then your monthly payments when you're out go up from $1500.

If you can avoid taking med school loans in the first place, great. To the original poster: if you can really save 80k before matriculation, that would be absolutely awesome--you could use that money to finance your tuition for first and second years and then only take out loans for 3rd and 4th years.

Your loans will enter a 6 mo grace period after than, and you can then choose to either set them up for a 30 year repayment schedule (or some other kind of graduated payment plan or hardship plan) and actually enter repayment (and pay the loans during residency) or you can apply for a residency deferment (private loans) or forbearance (federal loans) so you don't *have* to make any payments at all in residency. But you should try to pay the interest at least during residency if you can't afford the monthly rates for the "repayment schedule" they give you.

Depending on your living situation and the loan amounts you ultimately have, you might be able to actually start repayment during residency. If you can't afford that, then you can do the forbearance thing, figure out how much you have to pay monthly to prevent your principal from going any higher, and pay that during residency. The downside is that you still have a big principal to pay when you get out of residency but the upside is that your principal balance will not have grown (from interest) while you were training in your specialty.

Then there are things to think about during medical school like...

Federal programs for loan forgiveness when going into primary care or working in underserved areas...
State programs for the same..
Specialty choice (pediatrics [~100,000 starting] vs. radiation oncology [~250,000+ starting] vs. neurosurgery [prob. even higher]
Private practice vs. academics (salaries are generally lower in academics, except for a few fields in primary care, maybe)

Generally the lower-reimbursed fields have more opportunity for federal/state loan forgiveness/repayment options (peds, family medicine, even OB/GYN in some programs etc).

I'm sure most people know this stuff already, but the money stuff I actually just had to figure out for myself, once and for all, because I've been burying my head in the sand and now that the loans are coming into repayment I have to think about it.

Hopefully some of that gives you a better idea, anyway.