Session 40

In today's episode, Ryan answers a question about being a single parent in medical school.

Questions are pulled out from the forum over at OldPreMeds.org. Feel free to leave your question over there or engage with an awesome community of collaborative and positive premed and medical students.

OldPreMeds Question of the Week:

Poster is a single dad who works two jobs and in school full-time. He has shared 50-50 custody of his son and knows med school is a full time job. If he had full custody of his son, how flexible are medical schools with this kind of situation? Are there any resources for this kind of situation or personal stories related to this?

Here are the insights from Ryan:

A  lot of nontraditional students have significant others in their life. Medical school is not impossible for single parents but here are some things that you need to consider:

Medical school is a full time job (even more than that once you start your clinical years). Hence, you are going to rely on other people for the care of your child.

Resources from medical schools:

Most medical schools do not have resources for single parents. Their job is to educate students to become physicians and not a daycare for children of their students. (Although there are may be a few schools that may also have child care services for their students.)

Taking loans:

If you are the breadwinner for the family and you go to medical school, your ability to take loans from the federal government to pay for medical school is capped at what the budget is set by that school. The budget doesn't usually include any sort of extra food or clothing for family members, much less for child care.

If you have custody of your child and have to pay for child care, then that money has to come from somewhere and not built into your loans. Either some of your family members take care of the child or pay for the child care services or figure something else out. Private loans are not the best option for you to pay for it.

Major takeaway from this episode:

The best situation is to have family members nearby to help shoulder the burden. If this is what you want to do, then you will definitely figure out a way to do it.

Links and Other Resources:

www.MedEdMedia.com

OldPreMeds.org

The PreMed Years Podcast

The MCAT Podcast