Medical School Mania Grips Coptic Church Community, Investigative Journalist Special
The number of young Coptic students entering graduate programs for health-care professions such as medicine, pharmacy, dentistry has reached an all time high of 90%. The other most commonly entered professions include engineering, teaching, law, and psychology, and all together comprise a total of 9% of all young Copts. All other professions entered comprise 1%.
But all is not as it may seem. Some are incredibly disgruntled. We interviewed one young resident (who asked not to be named) whose wife is also a resident. “We have $700,000 in medical school debt not counting undergrad. Our monthly loan payment on medical school is $8,750. We thought if we got married, it would lower our taxes, but it only brought it down 2%. If both of our parents help us during residency, then with interest we will pay only $1,050,000 over the course of 10 years. But that is now in doubt. My wife’s mother is now asking for a BMW 5 Series 540i, and my wife is giving me grief because she wants to buy it for her mom. When I told my mother-in-law that we want to save up for a house, she responded, ‘But both of you are doctors. You have money.’ (She is thinking as if it were Egypt, where they do not have medical school loans). We ended up buying her the car and added an extra $1000 a month of car loan debt on top of our student loans. I’m now starting to think that her parents will not help us during residency, in which case, our debt will balloon to $820,000 by the time we finish residency and we will pay back over 10 years a total of $1,213,600.”
We also interviewed a dentist who opened a practice in California after finishing dentistry school three years ago. “Several graduates and their parents,” he began. “Had always told me during middle and high school that I would be making about $250,000 a year as a dentist, and that it is a lot less stressful than being a medical doctor.”
The reality is a lot different.
“For the past three years,” he continued. “I made a total of $500,000 annually before overhead costs; it is so hard to compete in California as a new dentist, and I wanted to keep marketing costs down. After I have paid my overhead costs for the practice, I have taken home only $90,000. I have never cracked the $100,000 mark yet.”
When we asked him about loans, he said, “I went to a private school. They told me it would help me be competitive, but patients don’t care where you graduated from as they do about your quality of service and personality. So my total principal owed is $350,000. I recently found out that engineers, teachers, and accountants owe nearly 10 times less than that and in California they make about the same amount of money that I take home per year. My wife is a teacher, and she is actually helping me pay off my loans. I now tell everyone to go into one of these three careers because they will have more take home pay than I do and with a lot less debt.”
We went to interview students in medical school and their thoughts on the experience.
“I cry myself to sleep every night,” said one young lady who refused to be named for fear of disappointing her mother. “My mom finished medical school in Egypt and immigrated here in her 20s. She married my father as she was taking her tests to start residency, and she became pregnant with me, so she gave up her career to take care of me and my siblings. I consider this as a way to fulfill her dream for her.”
When we asked her what was the hardest part of the experience, she replied, “That I force myself to smile with people and act happy and fulfilled.”
“It is incredibly stressful,” said another young man who also declined to be named because he is a deacon and a Sunday school teacher at his church and must maintain his reputation. “I drink regularly now, sometimes as much as five cups in one setting.” When we asked whether it was coffee, he answered, “No, alcohol. I honestly wish I could stop, but it is the only way I can cope with the intense stress. And on top of that no girl wants to date me because of the debt I will owe. (I am about to specialize in Neurosurgery, which is a 7 year residency). Some of the mothers have started discouraging their daughters from dating medical students or residents because of the debt they hold.”
We asked him if he would advise his friends and the youth in his church to not enter medical school. He replied, “But then all the uncles and tunts will not respect us.”
We interviewed the Sheikh el-Hara (a person who knows everyone’s business) of his church regarding this collective mania.
“They’re all doing this because they copy each other,” he said. “Everyone is jealous of the other, and no one has any imagination. I am an accountant, and I have done the community’s taxes, and I have been advising their parents and the youth for 20 years to not enter into medicine unless they love the work and believe in the meaning it has for the community because that is what will carry them in the face of all the stress and debts. Instead the parents argue with me that their children will be prestigious and make money this way. My wife and I have worked as accountants for 20 years, and we have both made a combined income of $140,000 a year, and now we have a net worth of $10,000,000. No doctor whose taxes I have done has a net worth of even 15% of that. Instead, these doctors have a net worth of negative -$700,000. In other words, the elementary school boy who has 5 dollars in his pocket has a higher net worth than these doctors. He’s probably better at managing it too.”