Doctor vs Engineer : Which to choose?

If you like science, it’s not unreasonable to be weighing your options in becoming an engineer versus a doctor. 

But which is better financially speaking? 

In certain cultures, becoming a doctor is the highest achievement, followed by becoming an engineer or lawyer as number two. 

Why is becoming a doctor so highly valued at number one? 

There are a few reasons: 

First, it’s an incredibly competitive and difficult path to complete, and the type of work you do is often considered noble. For that reason, being a doctor is highly prestigious. 

Second, the financial aspects. Job security is high, because people will always have health issues and doctors are always in demand. Additionally, doctors are some of the highest paid professionals, making low to mid six figures on average. In short, being a doctor is safe. It’s the only profession where if you work hard, you are almost guaranteed to make low to mid-six figures. 

Can you make more in other professions? 

Sure, but going into business or engineering doesn’t have that guaranteed level of salary. The range is much broader, meaning you can make much less or much more than the average physician, but on average you’ll probably be making less.

 Did your parents ever pressure you to become a doctor?

 If so, mash that like button and drop a comment below. 

So let’s say you want to get rich above all else. You don’t care about job satisfaction, or lifestyle, or your purpose in life. You’re just trying to make it rain. In that case, going into medicine must be the best choice, right? After all, it’s the highest paid profession. This is the part where we crunch the numbers. With any analysis, a series of assumptions must first be made. On the doctor side, we’ll have two comparisons: primary care and specialist. To become an average primary care doctor, you’ll finish college, then spend 5 years in medical school, graduating with an averagedebt of $198,000, and then complete 3-4 years of residency prior to earning your attending salary. Based on recent data, that starting salary will be $223,000. To become the average specialist, you’ll again have to complete 4 years of medical school, but since becoming a specialist like a plastic surgeon or dermatologist is so insanely competitive, many students take an extra research year to bolster their residency application. For that reason, we’ve simplified the analysis with 5 years of medical school. You’ll still graduate with an average of $198,000 in debt, but now residency is a bit longer. If you go into orthopedic surgery, it’llbe 5 years, 7 for neurosurgery, 6 for plastics, and 6 for cardiology. For simplicity, we’ve rounded residency and fellowship to 6 years in length. The starting salary for specialists is $329,000. 

[ US Based Data]

On the engineer side, you’ll be starting immediately after college and be pulling in a starting salary of $100,000, which is actually on the lower end of the starting salaries for a computer programmer in San Francisco. However, given the wide range of starting salaries for engineers, we’ve set $100,000 as the starting point. Additionally, student loans will accrue interestat 6%, investments earn 7% per year, and wage growth increases at 3% annually. If you’re confused about the wage growth rate, understand that inflation is on average 1-2% per year, and salaries usually steadily increases over the course of one’s career due to promotions and other factors. In order to reduce extraneous variables, we have eliminated living expenses and savings ratios, as it’s impossible to accurately estimate the average engineer’s versus doctor’s living expenses — cue lifestyle inflation. 

Therefore, we are going to be looking at only the lifetime earning potential. Do you have a problem with any of these assumptions? Fantastic. First, between primary care doctor and specialist, it’s clear that choosing a specialty that earns a high salary is far more advantageous from a financial perspective. Despite spending 1 more year in medical school and 2 more years in residency, specialists blast past primary care doctors just 8 years after completing their training. Given the high salary, they must also blastpast engineers, right? 

Not so fast. Despite a starting salary of more than 3 times that of an engineer, specialist doctors only surpass engineers in lifetime earnings at the age of 45. 

That’s right, from the age of 22 to 44, engineers are in a more favorable financial position than even specialist physicians. Primary care doctors don’t catch up to engineers until the age of 49, just a little over a decade away from retirement. To most people, this is counter intuitive. It comes down to one often overlooked and underestimated factor: opportunity cost. While future doctors are toiling away in medical school and residency, engineers are already making six figures.

 And if you manage to save that money, the powerful force of compounding comes into effect, accelerating your wealth accumulation. This analysis is far from perfect — and that’s beside the point . 

The purpose of this analysis was to demonstrate that becoming a physician is not as lucrative as you or your parents may initially think from seeing those salaries. There is a massive opportunity cost due to over 10 years of training and massive student debt. This is why you hear so many physicians warning youngsters from going into medicine for the money. On one hand, the training to become a physician is incredibly challenging, and the desire to get rich won’t help you push through in the same way that more personal motives will. 

But equally important, it just doesn’t make financial sense, unless your idea of financial success is being dirt poor during the best years of your life, and being rich only when you’re too old to fully enjoy the wealth. If you are on the fence about going to medical school, my advice is that you spend the extra time making sure it’s the right path for you. 

I’m curious, did your parents pressure you to go into medicine at all? Why or why not? Let us know down in the comments below. 

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 Let us know in the comments what you think about this whole topic as we would love to hear your thoughts on this.