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Medicine vs. Finance

pinkjigglypuff

pinkjigglypuff

Joined
4/14/11
Messages
42
Points
18
Suppose one is in college and has the opportunity to pursue acceptance to either medical school or masters in financial engineering. If one was willing to work very hard, which path would have the potential to earn more? Can you give pros and cons of each?

Best case scenario for pursuing medicine would be to become a neurosurgeon/plastic surgeon/dermatologist.

Best case scenario for pursuing finance through mfe would be FO quant for a hedge fund or starting one's own hedge fund?

Another question is, if one's dream is to start one's own hedge fund someday, should one pursue phd in physics, instead of mfe?

The above question is purely theoretical *cough cough*.
 
MD requires more training and $ (med school, intern year, residency, fellowship), so that's maybe 10 years of training. MFE is 1.5 years, PhD let's say 5 years. So the question is how much can you expect to make 10 years out, 15 years out, 20 years out?

For MD, I expect income progression to be fairly flat from 10 to 20 years, but the floor is higher than MFE/PhD.
 
It is so sad that people make career decisions based on potential earnings.

And, I will tell you something that I didn't know when I decided to go for MFE (starting MFE in Fall 2011). You can't become a front desk quant with an MFE. Well, you can... but you need to be at the level of PhDs... you will be competing with PhDs for FO quant positions.
 
pinkjigglypuff said:
Suppose one is in college and has the opportunity to pursue acceptance to either medical school or masters in financial engineering. If one was willing to work very hard, which path would have the potential to earn more? Can you give pros and cons of each?

Best case scenario for pursuing medicine would be to become a neurosurgeon/plastic surgeon/dermatologist.

Best case scenario for pursuing finance through mfe would be FO quant for a hedge fund or starting one's own hedge fund?

Another question is, if one's dream is to start one's own hedge fund someday, should one pursue phd in physics, instead of mfe?

The above question is purely theoretical *cough cough*.
Click to expand...

Do what you love *cough cough*, all of these paths that you point out here require alot of hard work and sacrifice, I you choose them just because of the money, you'll go nowhere and probably end up hating your job.
 
roni said:
It is so sad that people make career decisions based on potential earnings.

And, I will tell you something that I didn't know when I decided to go for MFE (starting MFE in Fall 2011). You can't become a front desk quant with an MFE. Well, you can... but you need to be at the level of PhDs... you will be competing with PhDs for FO quant positions.
Click to expand...
Why is that sad? There's nothing wrong with that. One may have an interest in multiple fields. It's only natural to choose the one with the greatest financial return. And lets be honest here, many people choose the path towards being a quant because of it's financial allure.
 
pinkjigglypuff said:
Suppose one is in college and has the opportunity to pursue ...
Click to expand...

Go for what you are passionate about and give it your best shot,
best case scenario would be that you will become someone rich, famous and successful in what is your passion,
and worst case scenario would be that you will enjoy the ride and will be proud of yourself that you had the balls to go for your passions
 
AWilliams said:
Why is that sad? There's nothing wrong with that. One may have an interest in multiple fields. It's only natural to choose the one with the greatest financial return. And lets be honest here, many people choose the path towards being a quant because of it's financial allure.
Click to expand...

If you are good with jobs in finance, you will make good money in finance. If you are good in the med field, you will make good money in that field. I would rather make 80K-100K a year, but I will know that I like what I'm doing or I'm good at it.
 
I agree with Roni. You could compare careers within Finance and within medical sciences for potential future earnings, but it is not fair to pick between medical and finance just by comparing incomes. They are two opposite sides of the spectrum and there are other factors to consider.
 
i'd think its harder to get into med school than mfe. not to downplay the rigorous admission standards of mfe, but med schools have acceptance rates in single digits, and the amount of extra curricular, research experience + grades required are insane.

medical: maybe more stable, structured. but the initial education and time investment is SIGNIFICANT.
quant finance: volatile, shorter time to recoup $.
 
don't go to medicine for the money. One day, somebody's life will be own your hands and it might not be important to you.
 
I have to echo Alain's sentiment.

Also, I repeat to you: think about how much time you are going to spend doing something you potentially do not like.t

Finally... ask yourself... how risk averse are you?
 
I do second everyone's sentiment that you should do what you like. However, I realize that you may be very young, and how are you supposed to just know what you want right now? Really, there is no absolute answer to that. As such, I'd go with MFE just because the skills you learn might be more flexible than a MD. I don't know that much about the medical field however, so maybe there is a lot of flexibility in medicine and I just don't know about it.

Oh and if you don't like memorizing material or you are not good at it, just rule out medicine =P
 
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