patrick.net

zzyzzx says

MMR says

I suspect that people who are 'all about money' don't often pursue medicine, since there are far easier ways to make money, like getting an MBA at a top 5 school.

I'm pretty sure that the "all about money" types frequently pursue medicine.

MMR and others ... easy money from top B-schools has a lot to do with one's parachute than educational achievement.

Here's an anecdote to chew on ... an engineer with a high undergrad GPA, did post-sales engineering work for 3-4 years and then got his MBA from Wharton. He was recruited by neither banking nor management consulting firms. And he applied to all the MC firms. Simply put, his parachute was wrong. He needed to have "equity" analyst or "junior consultant" from a M&S or a Booz-Allen, to be on the list for those industries, prior to applying. Instead, he'd worked in telecom and eventually, became an alleged director to a CTO group for something like $150K, not a bad salary but still, not what you'd expect from a place like Wharton.

Instead, if he'd scored let's say a 32-33 on his MCAT, he'd most likely be accepted to a medical school (granted not the top 25 [or even top 50] but still, a US AMA school) and later, he could become an anesthesiologist, earning $400K/yr, or if he doesn't like the OR scene, a pathologist for $250K/yr. Thus, for a person who's a good exam taker, if one is not *made* for investment banking or MC, then it's still better to become a doctor. And believe me, a lot of those folks have connections in those industries through friends and families.