The COVID Files: Deep dive on MDs, DOs, MCATs & possibly Accountants

oh, had no idea.

Anyways, modern medical school is ludicrously standardized. You have to pass 4 national standardized tests (3 computer based, 1 standardized patients). Tests on various major subjects are generally through NBME too, so they’re pretty standardized as well. DOs have a similar 4 national test system. I think they do something like NBME too for individual subjects, but IDK for sure I didn’t do DO school.

Whoever commented about residency is right. Not getting into or graduating a residency is a disaster. Once you do that though, you are very employable for the rest of your life.

You knew about UMKC so I thought you were familiar.

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It was fine.

I completely buy that. I have a buddy who graduated from a “tier 4 toilet” who is close to a millionaire with a PI firm where he’s luckboxed a few lucrative cases. I have another with whom I graduated from a T2 school who is a doc review monkey still struggling to make his loan payments.

Correct. I went to school at NMSU (now Truman St.) in Kirksville. I think someone told me osteopaths aren’t real doctors (making fun of the school) when I was a freshman and that’s where I got it from. I can only remember interacting with those guys a few times at parties. They were all very clean-cut and boring as one would expect.

That was the other saying in law school I remember. “A” students become law professors, “B” students become Judges & “C” students get rich. I should have been a ‘C’ student. Oh well.

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I’ve heard that if you want to get a clerkship with a top judge (like those who feed into the Supreme Court), then it really matters. However, looking over where recent SC clerks have gone to law school, it doesn’t seem like not going to a top law school is literally disqualifying.

It’s like luck plays an extraordinary role in life and anyone who says hard work and bootstraps should just be kicked in the nuts

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Again, to clarify, i did not mean “did fine” to mean “was effective”. I meant it as had social esteem and got paid.

Biglaw pays well but its a terrible job, like objectively awful. You’re expected to bill 2000+ hours, which functionally requires like 70 hour work weeks. You get paid well, like $300k for a senior associate, but your exit opportunities probably require a pay cut so its easy to get used to a certain lifestyle then have to dial it back in your mid to late 30s.

Most happy lawyers I know either work in house, have their own practice or work at a small firm where they are truly immune from billing pressures and can only take the work they want to do.

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Sorry, point was that medicine existed for 2500 years before it consistently worked, and thus it shouldn’t be surprising that there’s still some hooey associated with certain aspects of the profession.

If anything medicine is probably too “scientific” these days. Reading a book by a smart MD/PhD and he thinks most people need fewer pills and more weight lifting. He retired from 30 years of emergency medicine to open a strength training gym for people 50+.

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When they released the bar results the year I took it, I misread the spreadsheet and thought I hadn’t passed. I got physically nauseous and got tunnel vision. I was interning with a federal judge and sitting in her courtroom at the time. I thought I was going to pass out and/or vomit right there. Luckily, before o went and told the judge, I checked again a realized my error. Aside from the morning I woke up and saw that I’d missed a call from my mom at 4am and knew that it was to tell me that my dad had passed away, that was the worst any piece of information has made me feel.

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His biggest payday came from this lady who came in with neck pain from being rear ended and it was his turn, according to him. Insurance offered her like $5000 he wound up getting her over half a million. Instant rockstar status with the firm because he was in the right place at the right time.

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You need to be top 10% of your class and on law review to get a clerkship I think. And only the federal appellate court clerkships matter when it comes to biglaw. SCOTUS clerkship is like a winning lottery ticket.

These charts are interesting, but they are more about public health/sanitation and vaccination than going to a doctor when you’re sick. A lot of it is infant mortality. The life expentancy of an English Monk from 1500-1640 was 67. The life expectancy of a 15 year old girl in England (still facing high rates of death during childbirth) from 1780-1879 was 64.6. I think it’s true that many fewer people would make it to 80 or 90 without some kind of modern medical intervention, but looking at life expectancies in the 30s and 40s makes it seem like the first time anyone got a toothache or broken arm in 1500 they were going to die.

And tippy top law school too, right?

My understanding is the doctor community controls how many slots there are for doctors and it is purposefully controlled to keep up demand and earnings for the doctors out there.

Seems like we might eventually see the end of general doctors and see all of them specializing while nurse practitioners and physician assistants do the front line general medicine.

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This isn’t true at all. 2000 hours = 40 hours for 50 weeks. Unless you’re just super inefficient you should be billing 90%+ of your hours at work. It’s also a great way to pay off all your debt so that you have the option to take the job you want without still looking at $200k in debt.

I work with a lot of big law associates, and all the ones I know are putting in way more than 40 hour weeks.

All this talk about law and medical schools is what the WH meant by “lid”.

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