Financial Readiness for Medical School, Part 1

Why am I making my first substantive blog post about money? When I was in my senior year of undergrad, I had this notion that I wanted to apply to medical school but I hadn’t stopped to consider HOW I would get their financially. When I used to attend the University of Arizona-Phoenix and Midwestern-AZCOM seminars, the student speakers and admissions representatives always talked about the importance of grades, MCATs, shadowing, and extracurricular activities but I do not recall anyone ever discussing the importance of money. If money ever came up, the students would say, “Oh, everyone gets loans so don’t worry about it.”

So, in 2010, my first time applying to medical school, I started with paying $265 for the MCAT and $1499 for the Kaplan face-to-face MCAT class. At the time, I was working a student job on campus making $12/hr and I had to use my financial aid to cover my apartment in downtown Tempe, AZ. My, wife, who at that time, was my fiancé, would send me money from time to time but because she was in a PhD program of her own, she couldn’t afford to send me a great deal of money. I scored a 29 S on the MCAT and prepared to apply to medical school. I discovered that I couldn’t afford the AMCAS or AACOMAS fees so I looked to the fee assistance programs that both application services had. Unfortunately, I did not qualify because my father made too much money. Then there was another issue: I moved away from home when I was 17 and because I had a bad relationship with my step-person, they were not going to give me the tax documents that I would have needed to apply for fee assistance anyway. So, there went my opportunity to apply to medical school…

In a way, I consider myself fortunate that I wasn’t able to apply. I thought that everyone would get the federal subsidized or unsubsidized loans for medical school, just as I had for my undergraduate studies but as I found out, my sub and unsub loans were almost maxed out. To attend medical school, I was going to have to take the federal Graduate Plus loan and it is credit-based. My score at the time was around a 580, some 20 or so points shy of the 600ish FICO score that was needed to qualify for the Grad Plus. A cosigner was out of the question so I was not going to have a choice but to work on repairing my credit. Had I actually gotten into medical school, without some type of scholarship, I was not going to be able to stay in medical school beyond a year or two based on how much sub / unsub loan money that I was eligible for. I was being forced to confront my financial past so that I would actually be able to attend medical school in the future.

Tomorrow, I’ll be back to discuss how I was able to clean my credit up and get financially fit for medical school. I’ll also provide a breakdown of how much it cost me this cycle to apply. You will come away with a real appreciation of how expensive this endeavor is and why financial planning for medical school is as important as academic planning. I’ll conclude with some resources that will be useful to you as you financially plan for medical school.

Milestones

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind for me. For starters, in late October, I submitted what felt like the 7th copy of my dissertation proposal to my chair. By the 9th of November, the day before my 49th birthday, my chair approved my proposal and sent it to the rest of the committee. I also scheduled my dissertation proposal defense for 12/9. Additionally, I interviewed at Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine on 11/9. On 11/23, I got the call from RVUCOM that I'd been offered a seat in the Fall 2021 entering class. I am still at a loss for words. I started this journey to earning a seat in medical school almost 14 years ago and at times, I did not think that I would ever see this day. I also received an admissions offer from Ross University School of Medicine in Barbados on 12/9. Their offer came with a $93,000 academic scholarship and a $16,000 housing scholarship. Finally, I had my third medical school interview on 12/9 with A.T. Still University - School of Osteopathic Medicine, Arizona. SOMA has long been one of my top choices of medical school and the interview went EXCEEDINGLY well. Nothing is ever guaranteed, but I feel as if I will be offered a seat at SOMA and if so, I will have a tough decision to make. RVUCOM is an outstanding medical school and one that I would feel very at home at. SOMA is also an outstanding medical school and its located in my adopted home state of Arizona. Decisions, decisions. As my pop would say, this is a good problem to have... Lastly, I passed my dissertation proposal on 12/9!!! I was very stressed because my SOMA interviews took place all morning and when they ended, I literally had 10 minutes to switch gears and prepare for the proposal defense. Fortunately, I was well prepared and I answered all of my committee members questions and only one minor change was suggested. They want me to switch my theoretical grounding from the Precaution Process Adoption Model (PAPM) to the Transtheoretical Stages of Change Model (TTM). Other than that, I passed my proposal defense and can officially say that I am in the final stage of my Ph.D. studies. My IRB is ready to be submitted and hopefully by January 18th, I can start to collect data. Several weeks of milestones...

Why am I creating this Blog?

I was one of those pre-health students who the traditional pre-health advisors at my undergraduate alma mater did not see any hope for. Like many undergraduates, I faced some issues early on in my undergraduate experience: PTSD, homelessness, Keratoconus, no health insurance, and I worked 32-40 hours a week to support myself during my undergraduate studies. Plus, I am a non-traditional student; I initially started my undergraduate studies in the summer of 1989 but dropped out of school that December to enlist in the Army. My parents were undergoing a bitter, nasty divorce and I just wanted to get away from them and Texas. I didn’t return to school until 2005, when I was 34 years old. My undergraduate grades were not stellar by any means and I graduated in May of 2010 with a 3.18 science GPA and a 3.45 – 3.5 overall GPA. My MCAT score was a respectable 29 S but ASU Pre-Health Advising had written me off. I didn’t have the guidance necessary to get to a U.S. medical school nor did I have the financial literacy to make medical school a reality. At the time, my credit score stood at 580; not high enough to qualify for the federal Graduate PLUS loan that most health professions students utilize. Because I still wanted to attend medical school, I set out to teach myself what I needed to know to gain admissions to medical school. I also wanted to repair my credit and put myself into the financial position to attend medical school. I did not think that it would take 10 years to see my first medical school acceptance, but on November 23, 2020, I was blessed to receive my first medical school acceptance from Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine. My hope with this blog is to show others that with perseverance, determination, hard work, and motivation, medical school (or anything) can be a reality. I want to use this as a platform to share the lessons that I have learned along the way and hopefully, prevent others from making some of the mistakes that I have made along the way.