Understanding Medical Student Loans- Series - Part 1. how much does it cost?!

Probably the biggest hurdle that we all must go through as professionals or future professionals is the enormous cost of education. Be it dental school, medical school, law school, pharmacy school, etc…the cost of education can be in the hundreds of thousands. Some of the figures that you see on websites that state medical school loans average just over 100K is rediculous. I know many many folks out there that have loans around a quarter of a million dollars if not more. I also belong to the over quarter of million club.

Based on US news and world report, there are 145 schools of medicine in the US. Based on 2006-2007 numbers the costs:

Tuition/ Fees/ Insurance/ total
Harvard Medical School - 37,200/ ~2000/ 1200/ 40,400 + room + board + living expenses
Tulane University SOM - 40,000/ 2,666/ 1200/ 43,866 + room + board + living expenses
University of Minnesota (one of the most expensive public medical schools) - 19,000/1,500/ 1,800/ 22,300 + room + board + living expenses.
Emory University - 37,800/ ~1,500/ 1800/ 40,100 + room + board + living expenses.

Not to mention - cost of books, car insurance, medical supplies, etc, etc…the annual budget can run you negative upwards of 60,000 a year which equals to 240,000 in 4 years - if you another 10-15K for interviews for residency and applications, and relocation + accrued interest- everything is in excess of 250K.

In this series of posts, I will write about how I went about approaching my loans, lenders, understanding consolidation, forbearance, payment discounts, etc.

If anyone has any tidbits on student loans please post them on the comments section.

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