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Future Plan and Income Risk

First of all, I think the prompt for this week is very interesting. I don’t have a job lined up for when I graduated (I am graduating in December). However, my future plan is absolutely clear. Unlike most of other students in the class, being involved in a career associated with economics is not in my goal. Therefore, in the following parts, I will first talk about the kind of job/career I plan to pursue after graduation and its location. Secondly, I will talk about some of my efforts and decisions during college that contribute to my future job and income risk.

I am a dual degree student majoring in Kinesiology and Economics. I started following the pre-med path when I was a sophomore. Becoming a physician in sports medicine field is my dream ever since I was a teenager. Therefore, due to the specialty of my choice, I can only continue to stay in school (medical school) for another 4 years and pass the board exam before I actually jump in the “real world”. Compared to my other friends who get a job right after graduation, I will have a huge opportunity cost when I get out of medical school. For example, my roommate Kevin, who is majoring in CS, gets an offer from Bloomberg in New York with 140k/year. He will earn at least 560k when I graduate from medical school. However, I believe the opportunity cost can be recovered in the long term since physicians will typically have an average of 32k/year. The only thing matter here is that if I have the patience to keep walking on the road till become a licensed physician or not. As for locations of the job, usually I will stick with sports teams or stay in big hospitals in major cities. But the location doesn’t really have a huge impact on the salary.

Since I am graduating this December, I have already applied for different medical schools since August. So far, I completed interviews from UC Berkeley, UCLA, USC, NYU, and Northwestern. The final results will come out at around the end of the year. Looking back at my preparation, I think I tried a lot of things during college to make me become a better medical school candidate. I became a personal trainer at the ARC when I was in sophomore year. With this opportunity, I have built up my experience in communication with clients and responding to their reactions and needs immediately. Moreover, I have participated in 3 different research labs as undergraduate research assistants for over 3 years. In the labs, I help Professors and PHD students to complete their project. The topics of these projects vary from immunology to cancer cell mutation. Sometimes I have to go to Carle hospital and Davita Clinic to collect data from dialysis patients. These lab practices give me strong research background and offer me chances to choose whichever specific fields I want to get in to in the future. Last but not least, I spend over 180 hours in different hospitals and facilities shadowing doctors. All of the above reduce my future income risk as it increases my chances to get into a better medical school. As for now, my debt only limit to my car loans and house rent. I am lucky enough that my parents are capable to pay for my medical school tuition. Therefore, I firmly believe that the choices that I made will ensure that I will have a content life if I don’t quit in the middle.

   

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanOctober 15, 2016 at 3:43 PM

    You have an interesting path. I can see Kinesiology as a preparation for medical school, though I wonder how off the beaten path that is. In any event, in 2012 I had rotator cuff surgery and the guy who did it was the main doctor for the U of I Football team. So I gather that sports medicine is a bid deal and your background sounds like it would place you well to study orthopedics.

    But, my sense is that most pre-med students do more traditional science disciplines. My brother, who is both and MD and a PhD, was a cell biology student as an undergrad. I will be interested in learning from you how you ultimately do in getting into medical school.

    With that story, the Econ part doesn't fit in my mental model. You might explain why Econ was part of your package. Do the medical schools care about that or not? I also think your have just my course ahead of you before you graduate kind of odd. So you might comment whether this was the plan or if you had previously planned to graduate last spring and then something got in the way to block that.

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