Jump to content
Premed 101 Forums

Medical School in Canada: six figure debt???


Recommended Posts

I was reading Canadian doctor blog just now and was surprised to find that some of the residents have greater than 100k debt! How does this happen??

I have heard of many medical student investing with their LOC (which in case I heard very good returns in the end ie.// condo in toronto) and subsidization from government is pretty generous (compared to going to med school in US) so I don't understand how students can accumulate that much debt. 

What's the realistic budget/debt for medical school?

Thank you ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Many schools have tuition alone at the 20-28k range per year, so thats 80-100k for tuition alone for medical school, then factor in another 12-20k/year living costs(varies depending on your city and rent costs being the biggest variant).   If you don't have financial support from family(many medical students do of course), it is very easy to be 100k+ in debt at graduation time.  There are bursaries yes, but this varies by province and medical school. It seems quite common to get a decent amount from OSAP, but this is not universal in other provinces. 

As for "many medical students investing" i find that very unlikely, there are definitely some, but its definitely not many.  
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The only people I knew that had <100k debt either had family support or lived at home. I would find it hard to spend <100k given the high tuition in Ontario as well as the rent in certain cities (Toronto). I think after talking with many of my peers that having <100k debt was relatively rare.

I think that if you're lucky enough to go to a medical school in a province where living costs and tuition are cheap then your debt load would be much more manageable. 

I would also caution against investing with your LOC. While there are many success stories I have also heard stories of people getting burned. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Investing with the LOC is definitely the exception, not the norm. It's quite risky and likely means you wouldn't qualify for provincial student loans/grants (in Ontario at least).

Based on my calculations, even with a decent chunk of savings before starting med school but no family support, I'm looking at about $200k principal debt (i.e. not including the compounding interest) at graduation. Tuition alone for the 4 years is $110k, and living expenses are about $13k/year living quite frugally compared to most of my peers. This also doesn't factor in CaRMS and electives costs, which are probably another $5k easily in fourth year. I think the average med school debt is over $160k in Canada according to the AFMC, and that's quite skewed given the extremely low tuition costs for schools like Memorial and those in Quebec.

I'd be over the moon if I only had $100k in debt by the end of these four years. But that's just not possible, and not possible for most students.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, ilovepita said:

I was reading Canadian doctor blog just now and was surprised to find that some of the residents have greater than 100k debt! How does this happen??

I have heard of many medical student investing with their LOC (which in case I heard very good returns in the end ie.// condo in toronto) and subsidization from government is pretty generous (compared to going to med school in US) so I don't understand how students can accumulate that much debt. 

What's the realistic budget/debt for medical school?

Thank you ;)

If you don't have family support or money from a previous job, debt accumulates quickly. Most schools charge around 25k a year in Ontario at least, if you assume living costs are around 20k a year for a single person (more if living in downtown Toronto), thats 45k a year of debt each year of medical school. Add in debt from undergrad and that easily exceeds 200k debt by the time you graduate. Subsidies from the government do exist and they often can take 5-10k off of your tuition in the form of OSAP grants. If you apply for other forms of financial aid you can often find another 5k sometimes more, per year. So all in all you can reasonably expect to end up 30-35k negative each year assuming no family support. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...