med student looking for MBA advice

[weezyzeew]

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[michaelrack]

First time poster looking for advice- i'm a 3rd year med student that is miserable with med school and interested in different career choice. But still something that is related to health care in some way (administration, consulting, etc). Some questions...

1. how can i hedge my bets? like if i did a transitional/prelim year after med school to take step 3, and then went to business school, could i still be competitive in a non-competitive residency (IM, neurology, EM) in the future?

2. how difficult is it for a MD to get into a top business school? I went to a top-5 college, am at a state med school, probably about at the 2nd quartile of my class, did mediocre on step 1.

3. for other MD/MBA's, when would you advise getting an MBA? I've been quite disillusioned with medicine and so I'm quite certain that i won't practice in the future. But still I view residency as a backup that i'd like to have in case my post-business career doesn't work out. basically, what path would close the least number of doors?

4. i have little experience in finance, though it is something i think i would be quite interested in. would this hurt me in gaining admission to a top biz school? also, would it be hard for me to do well in biz school?

Thanks for your help guys, if you know of any good MD/MBA message boards/websites, please feel free to post.

1. assuming you are an AMG, you would still be reasonably competitive for IM/FP

3. after residency

 

[DrJosephKim]

send me a note and I'll be happy to share my thoughts with you.

 

[ccmonopolies]

It would be best if you finish your residency. Aim for the shortest one.

You want to get into a top 5 business school, the problem with that is you need GOOD work experience. I assume you went to med school straight out of college. So you don't have any work experience. No one waltzes into a top 5 MBA without significant work experience (2-5 years).

The good thing about your background is that you could potentially use your top college contacts to get a good job and then go for the MBA. The people at the top MBAs all have blue chip backgrounds. You need to have a similar profile to have a shot. Also, even people who did everything right do not all get into HSW.

This is why I recommend finishing your residency to hedge your bets. You never know if they would let you do your residency in the future.

Another point is that if you don't want to wait any longer, you can drop out of med school entirely. Only do this if you can find yourself a good finance or consulting job. This needs to be along the lines of McKinsey, or Morgan Stanley front office or what not. With these jobs, then you have a fighting chance of a top MBA. If you can't get these jobs now, you will have just as much trouble later on. Otherwise, you should stick with medicine.

 

[weezyzeew]

Sounds like solid advice but one thing- i actually did work for several years before going to med school. Just not finance stuff.

One question... if i were to do a residency, what are some other things that would boost my MBA application? obviously GMAT scores would matter, but what else? I always thought that MD applicants to MBA schools were rather uncommon... so they were prob viewed as a step up from the rest of the applicant pool (ibanking/consulting, straight out of college), am i wrong? also i'd imagine doing a residency at a university-affiliated hospital would probably help, no? anything else?

Thanks again.

It would be best if you finish your residency. Aim for the shortest one.

You want to get into a top 5 business school, the problem with that is you need GOOD work experience. I assume you went to med school straight out of college. So you don't have any work experience. No one waltzes into a top 5 MBA without significant work experience (2-5 years).

The good thing about your background is that you could potentially use your top college contacts to get a good job and then go for the MBA. The people at the top MBAs all have blue chip backgrounds. You need to have a similar profile to have a shot. Also, even people who did everything right do not all get into HSW.

This is why I recommend finishing your residency to hedge your bets. You never know if they would let you do your residency in the future.

Another point is that if you don't want to wait any longer, you can drop out of med school entirely. Only do this if you can find yourself a good finance or consulting job. This needs to be along the lines of McKinsey, or Morgan Stanley front office or what not. With these jobs, then you have a fighting chance of a top MBA. If you can't get these jobs now, you will have just as much trouble later on. Otherwise, you should stick with medicine.

 

[ccmonopolies]

Sounds like solid advice but one thing- i actually did work for several years before going to med school. Just not finance stuff.

One question... if i were to do a residency, what are some other things that would boost my MBA application? obviously GMAT scores would matter, but what else? I always thought that MD applicants to MBA schools were rather uncommon... so they were prob viewed as a step up from the rest of the applicant pool (ibanking/consulting, straight out of college), am i wrong? also i'd imagine doing a residency at a university-affiliated hospital would probably help, no? anything else?

Thanks again.

Well, you certainly would be more unique than the other applicants. But the schools would want to know what the purpose of you going to business school really is. If you say the purpose is to learn finance so that you can get a finance job, then that is not a good proposal. This is because if they accepted you, after school, you would be competing against other people from the same school that had previous finance experience. You'll most likely get shafted for the "most coveted" jobs. You don't really offer them anything if you do this.

Your best bet would be to craft your application later on to say that you want to lead a healthcare organization and that the MBA would give you the missing business background.

You need to score high on GMAT, which should be easy. But getting into a top business school is all about superior accomplishments in the work place and your potential to lead others to accomplish even more impressive tasks. Get it? That's why it's so hard to get into these programs, you have to have the right stuff. You probably know whether you do or do not.

Aim for the best "brand name" residency that you can get into.

Best of luck.

 

[bronx43]

Dude, figure out what you want to do before you plop down $150-200k on TOP of your medical school loans for a top MBA program. You say you want to do finance. Ok, what kind of finance? The term is about as broad as "health care." Are you referring to Ibanking, private equity, hedge fund? If so, what do you know about those jobs? Honestly, I've yet to meet a single person who says they like high finance, maybe with the exception of HF guys (but the ones I know are mostly quant, so unless you're a straight up math whiz, you can forget about it). Banking is about as tedious a job you can find. I'm pretty sure I'd go into major depression if I had to do bit** work 18 hours a day to put together useless pitch books.

Maybe you want consulting? Ok, do you want to travel Monday through Thursday to Nowhere, Kansas? Oh, and you'll probably be working 70-80 hours a week excluding travel time. It takes a special kind of person to become career consultants or bankers -the masochist kind. There's a reason why turnover is so damn high at MC firms.

If you want to do administration, then you won't need a brand name MBA. Hell, you could make do with a cheaper, shorter MHA, unless your goal is to be CEO of Kaiser. Most private hospital CEOs aren't even MDs, let alone MBAs from HSW.
I know medicine sucks. I don't like it too much either. The grass looks greener, and sometimes it is. You just have to figure out if it is - we all see different shades of green.

 

[bronx43]

You need to score high on GMAT, which should be easy. But getting into a top business school is all about superior accomplishments in the work place and your potential to lead others to accomplish even more impressive tasks. Get it? That's why it's so hard to get into these programs, you have to have the right stuff. You probably know whether you do or do not.

Aim for the best "brand name" residency that you can get into.

Best of luck.

Exactly. Getting in MBA programs isn't like getting into medical school, where they heavily rely on numbers to distinguish their candidates. Top MBA schools want future leaders, so as long as you score like a 720+, you should be golden for any program out there. The STORY you can weave about your past accomplishments and your future career goals is far more important - even more than your medical school or residency program (I think of minimal importance).
I had a buddy, who worked at an average consulting firm, get into a top program by joining some environmental conservation groups in his city, and played the card of wanting to be a leader in the green initiative. He has no real interest in that, but that's how the game is played.

 

[lorain]

what do you want to do with the mba?

i dont think HCP need top 5 business schools if they just want to gain knowledge to run a HC facility

if you are a doc, do the online program at UMASS Amherst....that program is LOADED with all kind of docs (ER, surgeon, pathologist, IM, etc)...UMASS also waives the gmat for those who have doc degrees

 

[weezyzeew]

Thanks guys for the replies.

I'm not completely sure what I'd like to do... like someone said before, this could be one of those grass-is-greener type of things, but i'd like to be involved in something that's less rote (medicine) and more intuitive-thinking based. We all know that med school is a pressure-cooker environment where ppl who memorize most efficiently succeed. Correct me if i'm wrong, but when you're a practicing physician, you'd basically be seeing very similar cases every day. Am i the only one that thinks this is very robot-like? I feel that i enjoy medicine in a purist sense, in that i like learning and applying material about different disease and actually helping people. But not on a more realistic basis (memorizing, dealing with type A colleagues, dealing with irritable patients, patients who don't follow your orders, malpractice, etc). Add that to some personal experiences that have had me disillusioned with med school and i've found lately that i've been kind of lost my drive for medicine.

So i'm not really sure what i want to do... but i've felt that being involved in public health or consulting would be attractive. you'd be given some sort of problem and you'd use different resources to come up with a solution. And you'd be able to tell your clients, which would probably include some bigwigs, what to do. Here, i'd imagine that compliance rates would be higher than if you were at some IM clinic where patients repeatedly don't take their insulin, stop smoking, etc.

But im not really sure how i'd get involved in that sort of thing... as someone said before, i don't want to plop down another $150k for biz school so i'm trying to look for info in this sort of thing. And of course i may be totally out of line in my perception of consulting and public health. Also i have a minimal background in pol-sci and econ... and i kinda figured that with a MD, MBA or MPh, i'd have more attractive options to pick from. Hope i'm not being super naive

 

[michaelrack]

look into preventative medicine residency

 

[weezyzeew]

why prev med?

 

[michaelrack]

why prev med?

Prev med generally is 1. one year traditional internship
2. one year MPH (free!)
3. one year prev/occ med

The OP mentioned an interested in getting an MPH. Prev med preserves his options, allowing him to practice clinical medicine and get licensed, if he wishes. Prev med seems like a good hedge, preparing someone for both healthcare admin and clinical med
(I have no practical exp in prev med, this is just what I have read over the years)

 

[Doc89]

I could try and give you my 2 cents, but since you asked for good MD/MBA message boards/threads/sites I think the best bet would be to direct you to the MD MBA Association www.mdmbas.com

They have some great resources on their, especially about the questions you had about applying and getting in (whether no finance/biz experience will hurt you...probably not as long as you can spin it well)