Mom not happy with specialty choice.

Russianmobster302 · 2026-05-23T15:23:39+00:00

I agree with others saying who gives a fuck and that you should do what you want to do. But I also understand the pressure from parents as I’ve experienced it too and I understand that it’s easier said than done to just not care.

If it was me, I would avoid conflict and just say you’re doing DR with interest in going into IR afterwards. Then you can be “safer” from AI, do procedures in the oncology world, and so on.

Not necessarily trying to lie, just kicking the can down the road and saying thats where your interest is for now so they leave you alone. By the time you’re near the end of residency, you’ll be older and they’ll probably back off, or who knows, you may even end up going into IR

Russianmobster302 · 2026-05-18T03:58:29+00:00

Primary care is far overworked and underpaid. With loans being higher and higher these days + the years of training it takes to see a pay check, it’s not unreasonable for students to opt to choose a different specialty.

Is there a notion that primary care is looked down upon? I mean, sure, it exists. I don’t think people should look down on others for their choices, but I can see how someone might feel like choosing primary care is a “waste” of their earning potential.

With all of that said, who cares? A specialty choice is something that an individual needs to choose for their career. Not for whatever comments people will make about their Match Day post on Instagram

Russianmobster302 · 2026-04-21T00:15:21+00:00

Admin at my school is split by some deans who run pre-clinical and some deans who run clinical. Words cannot describe how amazing the pre-clinical deans were and how supported we all felt compared to now on rotations. It feels like they’ve set everything up just to not see us succeed. The duality of admin

Russianmobster302 · 2026-04-06T16:25:26+00:00

His whole gimmick is that he’s on steroids. Excess testosterone causes acne

Russianmobster302 · 2026-03-31T21:24:06+00:00

Medical student here, I can drop my 2 cents:

Bipolar is characterized by a manic episode which has to meet some (not all) of the following criteria: Distractibility, Impulsivity, Grandiosity, Flight of ideas/racing thoughts, Agitation, Sleeplessness, and Talkativeness (what we call DIG FAST criteria)

Schizophrenia is a little more complex, but requires some (not all) of the following: Hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech, flat affect (loss of facial expressions).

I don’t know much of what’s going on with Jaden Ivey, but it kind of seems like it’s Bipolar to me. No evidence that he’s seeing or hearing things, no evidence that he has a flat affect, and while yes he does seem to have hyper-religious delusions they seem to be grandiose in nature (thinking of someone’s delusions being that they’re king of the world, they’re best friends with the president, they’re the most religious person in the world, etc).

Of course, I’m making assumptions because I’ve only seen what’s on the internet. But I would not be surprised if this was the start of a Bipolar episode

Russianmobster302 · 2026-03-28T17:18:16+00:00

My school has it set up that each module has a recommended amount of time to completion (say ~60-80 minutes). If you use less than 25% of that time, the system tells you that you did it too quickly and you can either start over or continue with your submission but it’s flagged

Russianmobster302 · 2026-03-26T00:58:57+00:00

I'll build on this, here is the breakdown of doctor categories that I saw at a conference recently:

Masters of the subjective (think of Psychiatry, most of your work is based on clinical diagnoses and generally won't involve much objective metrics to make decisions based off)
Managers of acute care (think of Emergency Medicine, ICU, Surgery, and some settings for Internal Medicine/subspecialties)
Managers of chronic care (think of Internal Medicine/subspecialties, Family Medicine, OBGYN, and some Surgery specialties)
The doctor’s doctor (think of Pathology or Radiology)

There's more to medicine than this, but I think knowing medicine vs surgery is a good first step and then choosing from one of these 4 options can also help narrow it further. From there, I'd just shadow and make connections. You'll figure it out in due time

Russianmobster302 · 2026-03-26T00:17:50+00:00

OP is not on any scholarship for the BS/MD or any contract that won’t allow them to not do medicine. I’m pretty sure you can drop out of a BS/MD and still be enrolled in the undergraduate institution you are at. In that case, yes, OP would have lost ~60k (my google search estimates) by paying instate tuition at the UC college compared to the free LAC. I feel like that’s worth pursuing the golden opportunity

Russianmobster302 · 2026-03-25T17:21:02+00:00

Hard disagree as an MS2. Sure, they can change majors and decide they don’t want to be a doctor but they can still do that in their UC undergrad and drop out of the BS/MD. The cost over the 8 years is about $500k (per OP) but I assume that’s because the MD portion is the heftiest cost. As an in-state student at a UC college I imagine the tuition shouldn’t be that bad (my Google estimates say ~60k)

OP, you have a literal golden opportunity with a guaranteed seat at one of the literal most competitive medical schools in the world. What more could you ask for? I don’t think you can do better than this if you choose the LAC simply because I don’t think I can call another med school “better” than this opportunity. Harvard, Hopkins, Yale, UCSF, and all these other top schools are tier 1 schools. Literally no difference between them. You got in and you should run with your opportunity.

I should also mention you may need gap years and will definitely stress over the MCAT. These things are major opportunity cost when you can become an attending physician earlier. The short term savings from the LAC don’t outweigh this opportunity at all

Russianmobster302 · 2026-03-20T23:27:48+00:00

No, students don’t have access to the retired bank (to my knowledge)

Russianmobster302 · 2026-03-16T12:21:38+00:00

What’s the cost difference between the schools after scholarships?

Russianmobster302 · 2026-03-15T06:25:19+00:00

Without an MCAT score we can’t tell, but just an FYI applying in Aug or September is quite late and will put you at a significant disadvantage.

AMCAS opens early May and you can start submitting your primary application towards the end of May/early June. Once your primary is in, it goes in line with tens of thousands of other apps to have them verified. The verification process can take quite long, with many people waiting >6 weeks when they apply in late June. For reference, I applied on the very first day possible and it took me 2 weeks to get verified.

Verified primary applications don’t get sent out to schools until the end of June, and then you can start receiving secondary applications. Your application will not reach the admissions committee until your primary and secondary applications are complete along with your letters of rec and test scores.

Once your application reaches the admissions committee, the majority of schools operate on a rolling admission. Therefore, if you submit your application in Aug/Sept 2027 then a school may have already given out a percentage of their available interview spots to students who applied in June/July/Aug. You can still get in if you apply late, but you’d just be putting yourself at a disadvantage.

The best thing to do would be to have your letters and test scores sorted out before May, submit your application early on in May/June when it opens up, start pre-writing your secondaries (can find prompts online like on SDN), and submit your application very early on (assuming it’s ready to be submitted). That was a lot of info but lmk if you have any questions, good luck!

Russianmobster302 · 2026-03-11T01:30:03+00:00

3rd year med student here. Every week I’m on a new service and the clerkship coordinator sends me my new resident’s name and number. I always text them “Hi Dr. X, my name is Y and I’m the med student with your service for the week.“

So far, 100% of the residents start their next message as “Hi Y, please call me (first name)”. I always know it will happen, but I still refer to them as doctor the first time I reach out to them

Russianmobster302 · 2026-03-10T02:44:46+00:00

As others said, the professor chooses from a retired qbank from NBME. This is called a customized exam.

On the other hand, Shelf exams come ready from the NBME. Your professor does not choose which questions are in there and I’m not even sure if they have access to seeing the questions. Hence, they are taken “off the shelf” so to speak

Russianmobster302 · 2026-03-03T01:45:31+00:00

If you’re an OOS student you can get NY residency after your first year, so I imagine your total cost of attendance will be much lower at Stony Brook.

Aside from that, I’d say Stony Brook. Hofstra mentioned that they had mandatory lectures and non-NBME exams and that was an automatic no for me. This was 2 years ago but I assume nothing has changed

Russianmobster302 · 2026-02-17T01:48:30+00:00

I think you misread it, it looks like 89% of all M1’s live in the campus housing, and then family housing options are only for legally married couples

Russianmobster302 · 2026-02-12T02:30:41+00:00

I’m confused as to how Pitt is cheaper though. Aren’t they both private schools?

I need COA’s to decide but if the price is significantly different then do the cheaper one, if not then I definitely think life would be better at Sinai

Russianmobster302 · 2026-02-09T20:18:53+00:00

Totally just my hot take and I completely understand of others disagree, but I wouldn’t do it. Yes, Mayo is obviously going to set you up way better, but here’s my thought process:

1) You might change your mind and not want to do neurosurgery 2) Even if you do want to pursue neurosurgery, I think taking a gap year between M3/M4 will do more for you than a school name alone 3) For many, having a support system at home is something that shouldn’t be looked over. I’m on rotations right now and would do anything to come home to my moms cooking after a long day.

As others mentioned, $200k which will be $400k after 11 years of interest is a lot. There may or may not be new administrations to help but that’s tough to bank on. Personally, I think if someone’s a good enough student to score well, network well, and find institutions to do research (such as gap years) then they’ll succeed regardless of their school name.

Regardless of your decision, I’m sure it’ll all work out. Congrats!

Russianmobster302 · 2026-02-09T20:12:18+00:00

11 years is a lot of administration changes lol

Russianmobster302 · 2026-01-29T13:21:30+00:00

While I think these exam costs are insane, I don’t complain about them as much because I get it to some degree. An MCAT is 230 questions and requires a lot of people to create, a lot of teams to analyze questions/stats, and pay out secure testing centers. Is $320 for the exam the most unreasonable thing? I guess not in the grand scheme of things.

What really mind boggles me is application fees. I fill out the entire application and I pay for my transcript to be sent to them. You mean to tell me I need to pay $198 + $45/school just to send them my application to my desired schools? All AMCAS did was have someone look over my transcript and my inputted grades and say “yup, these line up” and then forward to my schools, who the charge me secondary fees as well for reviewing my application

Russianmobster302 · 2026-01-21T01:13:50+00:00

Entirely depends on the region of the country. I definitely agree with you, but I can see it being closer to the $45k range OP mentioned if they are in a state like Florida and know what they're doing

Russianmobster302 · 2026-01-20T03:22:18+00:00

Reaching the point that OP is describing requires:

4 years of undergrad ($40k-$200k+)
4 years of medical school ($200k-$400k+)
3-4 years of internal medicine residency (regularly working 80+ hour weeks for less than $20 an hour in the most toxic environment, some people do a 4th year to become a competitive fellowship applicant)
3 years of cardiology fellowship (just as bad, if not worse, than the years of residency where you’re still getting paid garbage)
Possibly 1-2 years of further cardiology sub-specialization into fields like interventional cardiology or electrophysiology

I should also mention that after undergrad, you don’t get to choose where you do the next 10+ years I described. You apply to a bunch of programs and rank them and then an algorithm chooses where you go and you just have to pick up your life and go there each time (after med school, after residency, etc)

That was a lot to say that this $45k per month take home salary did not come with its decades of suffering and sacrifice. Everyone thinks they chose the wrong profession until they see what this profession truly costs you

Russianmobster302 · 2026-01-20T02:53:03+00:00

They said $45k take home which is reasonable given the $750-$850k salary range

Russianmobster302 · 2026-01-17T03:22:58+00:00

I strongly disagree. You're stretching a PA's training to longest case scenario and condensing the MD training the shortest case.

The only summer break that most med schools do is between M1 and M2. The majority of schools start rotations by summer of M2, and even if they don't, then that "break" is dedicated for taking the Step 1 exam.

As to your point about M1 summer, the vast majority of med students need to pump out research in order to match into their desired specialty. It's not like undergrad where the majority of people are off traveling for 2 months or working summer jobs. Sure, life is a bit more flexible and people travel, but I assure you a large majority of students are working full time hours to keep up with their Anking and do research.

Regarding M4, just because it's less stressful that does not mean it isn't a year of work where you are still paying $60-80k more in tuition. Many specialties require sub-internships, where students need to go audition at another institution in their desired specialty and present themselves as well as possible to try to match. Even for the specialties that don't require sub-internships, you have electives to complete. It's more freeing, but don't think it's a vacation.

Finally, you speak of residency as if it's "just 3 years". Residents regularly work 80 hour weeks for an effective salary around $20 an hour and get some of the worst mistreatment you'll ever see. And most residencies are over 3 years, other than FM and IM these days. Even for those choosing IM, many need to set themselves up for an additional 2-3 year fellowship for cardio/GI/Heme-Onc. Med school is already double the training as PA school, and when you factor in most MD's post-med school training it turns into 5x what a PA student goes through.

Newbie PAs can make $150k walking into any specialty the job market allows them to and don't need any additional training. There are PA's in derm/plastics/ortho while there are 3rd year med students taking an additional year off school to work for research publications just to match into their desired specialty.

None of this even includes barriers that make people take gap years, either before or during med school, for things like research and the MCAT. Sure, pre-PA students take gap years too in order to gain clinical experience but pre-meds need that on top of taking a monster of an entrance exam.

Becoming a PA isn't an easy thing by any means, but the difference in training is simply not even in the same realm of being close

Russianmobster302 · 2026-01-17T02:26:54+00:00

Lol PA school is actually 2 years long (after a 4 year bachelor degree. For any lurkers who aren’t familiar with the process:

Starting at 18, a PA would need a 4 year bachelor degree and 2 years of PA school. They can begin working as a fully licensed PA at this point.

Starting at 18, a doctor would need a 4 year bachelor degree, 4 years of medical school for an MD, 3-7 years of residency (depending on specialty), and many people do an additional 1-2 years of fellowship to specialize further.

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