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During my sophomore year of high school my sister became sick. She became very weak to the

point she didn't have the strength to eat or drink or even stand. Spent months moving in and out

of hospitals. After a while we found out she had an autoimmune disease. Even though her illness

isn't curable, the relief I got when the doctor said she was going to be ok was nothing like ive

ever felt before. After that I started looking into the medical field because I want to help others

like the doctors helped my sister. After learning about the medical field I found out you had to go

to medical school. Medical school is a four year grad school that is extremely competitive and

hard to get in. In medical school you learn the basics of becoming a doctor. As a current student

wanting to go into the medical field, medical school is always on my mind as well as on the mind

of many other pre-med students. Medical school has many great things but the main issue I have

noticed is the cost. According to a study done by Melanie Hanson on the

https://educationdata.org website the average medical student comes out of med school with an

average of 215,000 dollars in debt. This is because medical school has a bunch of resources.

During your third and fourth years you actually work in the hospitals and that alone is very

expensive because the insurance alone is very expensive because they expect medical students to

make mistakes and sometimes those mistakes can cost a lot of money. The cost to attend medical

school is almost five times more expensive per year compared to a normal college and

sometimes even more. Many people wanting to go the medical school route stop because the

price is so scary to them and gives them so much anxiety that they just drop the idea of going to

medical school as a whole. There have been a lot of things schools have done to try to make the

price less substancial for people wanting to go to medical school. They have started doing a

bunch of scholarships and there are programs you can do to increase your chances of having your

student loans forgiven. All of these are good but this still doesn't change most people's thoughts
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on attending because no of those things are guaranteed. The government have done everything

but lower the cost of the tuition itself. According to an academic paper called Exploring Which

Medical Schools Cost the Most: An Assessment of Medical School Characteristics Associated

With School Tuition written by Ginocchio, Luke A and Rosenkrantz, Andrew B. “Among 148

included medical schools, adjusted average ± standard deviation tuition was $47,612 ± $23,765

(range $12,761-$141,464).” At the very least I think the first year or two of medical school

should be cheaper. During the first 2 years you're mainly in the classroom so it isn't as expensive

as the last 2 years. With this solution students will be able to drop out a year into the program

without leaving them in student debt for the rest of their lives. This wouldn't make dropouts more

likely because the selection for medical school is insanely strict because they don't want just

anyone to be able to become a doctor but this would make it less threatening to someone who

doesn't have the financial resources to pay off the school. With this, less privileged people will

feel more comfortable about entering and exploring careers in this field. With more people

exploring careers in medicine more funds and attention will be allocated to the field will in turn

lead to helping patients get them better care which is the main goal of any person that should be

going into the medical field.

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Work cited

Hanson, Melanie. “Average Medical School Debt” EducationData.org, July 10, 2021,

https://educationdata.org/average-medical-school-debt

Ginocchio, Luke A., and Andrew B. Rosenkrantz. “Exploring Which Medical Schools Cost the

Most: An Assessment of Medical School Characteristics Associated With School Tuition.”

Current Problems in Diagnostic Radiology, vol. 49, no. 2, Elsevier Inc, 2020, pp. 85–88,

doi:10.1067/j.cpradiol.2019.06.009.