Medical school is exorbitantly expensive. If you are not careful which loans you choose and are not diligent in your pursuit of grants and scholarships, you could easily wind up with $200,000 of debt by the time you graduate. Although most doctors eventually make a very good living, it usually takes years of hard work, and how prosperous you are is highly dependent on what kind of practice you decide to go into. Because primary care specialties are less lucrative than more specialized areas of medicine, many medical students do not fell they can afford to go into primary care. This has led to a crisis of primary care providers, particularly in rural and impoverished areas.
The Federal government offers two types of student loans for graduate students: The Stafford Loan and the PLUS Loan (for Parents and for graduate students). Graduating students can also take advantage of a Federal Consolidation Loan to combine all of their college loans into one manageable loan package.
If you have multiple loans and limited income after graduation, a consolidation loan could help you get control of your debt. A consolidation loan enables graduates with one or more Federal student loans to combine all of them into one loan. This allows the student to reduce his loan payments to one more manageable monthly payment. Details are available at www.loanconsolidation.ed.gov.
Used judiciously, private student loans are an excellent way of rounding out your funding picture. But that is precisely how they should be used – to round out the picture. Students should only consider private loans once they have exhausted their federal loan options.
The National Health Service Corps offers loan repayment and scholarships to primary care providers and students for serving at NHSC sites in communities with critical needs. Information can be found at www.nhsc.hrsa.gov.
·Physicians are eligible for public service loan forgiveness. After paying on student loans for 10 years while working in a position that meets the statutory definition of public service, doctors may have the balance of their loans forgiven. You can find more information at www.aamc.org/advocacy/meded/79048/student_loan_repayment.html.