The ridiculous expenditure of getting into medical school

Following the completion of my masters degree, I realized that being exclusively in academia was not for me. My desire and drive to help people and do something was most definitely not fulfilled by playing the game of getting a tenure track position following a PhD and Post-Doc. Over the years I had toyed with the idea of going to medical school and it became more apparent to me that this is what I wanted to pursue. I'll be honest in that I'm not the usual candidate. I didn't realize I wanted to do this until I was 25 years old, I was originally at school only to play sports, and I have not tailored my life and experiences around entering medical school.

With all of that being said, I'm still trying (although unsuccessfully at this point) to make this process happen. What I have been absolutely shocked and floored by is the cost of going through this process. By no means are we exceptionally well off but live comfortably with good jobs, and are still blown away by the financial impact of this and can't imagine what it would be life for someone who was in a position less fortunate then we are.

Here is my cost of applying to medical school so far:

You must write the MCAT exam for almost every single school in North America. - $300 USD (~$420 CAD)
Application fees to a single university. - $250 CAD

On my first go round I was unsuccessful and scored in a mediocre percentile on my MCAT as I did not take most of the basic sciences in my undergraduate degree. I can explain to you on a cellular level how the cardiovascular and nervous system functions, but could not tell you the stupid periodic trends. So I took a course to learn the content and material for the second go round.

Course to learn all the random information required for the MCAT. - $2,300 CAD
MCAT round 2. - $300 USD ($420 CAD)
Application fees to two Universities. - $600 CAD

At this point we are about $4,000 CAD into this, and that doesn't even discuss the fact that you are REQUIRED to have an undergraduate degree, which lucky for us in Canada is not nearly as huge of a cost as elsewhere but can still run you in the tens of thousands of dollars in tuition alone. Or the time that you must take off of work to study for an 8-hour exam.

The point of all of this is to say that we have created a cash cow process that has the potential to disproportionately favour those who are financially well off, while also potentially ignoring candidates who may not have the resources to get themselves there. There should be a greater drive for more diversity in the medical profession as the way in which things have been done for the last 50-100 years is no longer serving us as well.

Anyways, this is all for my Saturday morning rant.

Love always,

Ian (+ AL)

Image source: https://premeddit.com/mcat-resources/general-mcat-exam-information/mcat-aamc-logo/