Would you be IS for any of these schools, or are they all OOS schools for you?
I’ve got $107,000 in student loan debt I’m currently attempting (which I say because there’s no way I’m ever getting rid of it on my salary; I’m on PAYE and holding out for forgiveness and the tax bomb) to pay back. Most of it was from my short stint in vet school, but some came from undergrad. I’ve already accepted that I’m going to have to put a not insignificant amount of my income every month towards these things with the balance only continuing to increase because I can’t even touch interest at this rate. Even still, it weighs on me psychologically a lot. I kick myself every day for even going to vet school and, honestly, even if you could somehow guarantee me that I would have finished and graduated with my DVM, I still don’t know that I’d do it over again. Granted, I’ve found my personality type and admittedly pretty severe mental health issues don’t really “mesh” well with a lot of things in the field. I wish I would have realized that before getting myself into the hole, but I did meet a lot of amazing people both in real life and on SDN as a result of foraying into vet med, and I’m using some of the knowledge I gained in my current job, so maybe it wasn’t a complete waste.
Still, you’re right to be concerned. The debt is very real and very scary. $105,000 in undergrad debt alone is a lot; imagine adding $100,000 (if you’re paying “cheap” IS tuition) or even $250,000+ (if you’re going OOS or international) to that amount, plus interest, plus capitalization. It’s a lot to handle and as much as I hate to pull this card, as a pre-vet, it’s hard to really grasp and conceptualize just how much money that truly is until you start paying it back. You need to be very, very sure that this is the field for you because, as you are clearly well aware, starting salaries in most areas in vet med are not commiserate with the average debtload.
I second
@SkiOtter ’s suggestion to maybe try shadowing in human med for a little bit if you can and if that is something that you’re actually potentially interested in. You’re right that it pays better, overall, but that path takes just as much tenacity and dedication to make it through as vet med does, so you definitely don’t want to jump in just because you’d make more money and possibly have a slightly lesser debt burden.
I’m not saying to not go for vet med if that is truly what you want to do, but the financial sacrifice is so great that you
really need to be absolutely sure that it is what you want and that you can’t see yourself in any other career, especially with you already having a substantial amount of debt.
Seriously, explore your options and then reevaluate how you feel. I wish I’d done that more.
