Dated info, but this is what I know.

My brother went to undergraduate school on his own dime. He wanted to go to med school but didn't know how he'd work out the finances. This was back in 1976, but at that time, the USAF would pay your way through med school if you were able to get accepted at med school. My brother wasn't really gung ho about the military, but he was pretty practical when it came to money. He was accepted at med school, took the USAF up on their offer, and they paid all his bills plus a stipend (might have been a 2Lt's monthly pay). Once he finished med school, he had a seven-year commitment. He didn't really mind that. He didn't have a nickle of debt (unlike his med school classmates who had paid their own way) and it gave him time to get all of his board certifications out of the way. He started out as a captain in the USAF (which is reasonable pay), got a bonus check from the USAF every year, and was a major by the time he hit the seven year point. He left the USAF with no hard feelings and went to work for Kaiser.

Again, things are probably different these days, but if you do well in college and you want to serve in a branch of the military as a physician, it's not a bad deal.

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"Human existence is based upon two pillars: Compassion and knowledge. Compassion without knowledge is ineffective; Knowledge without compassion is inhuman." Victor Weisskopf.

Commitment for medical school

Setting aside the ridiculousness of a pre-med degree

Medicine is hard work. As in. Are you prepared to study for 4-5 years. Then apply for residencies and make poor money with high insurance premiums and work till you qualify?

Physicians IME (and I've spent nearly 15 years working with exceptionally good ones) have commitment.

Is your son willing to commit? Because with medicine it may not be the best deal he can get on costs of studying but the fact is that it's (in the US) 10-15 years from leaving HS to being a board certified sub specialist

(The cynic in me says, go to Europe where they are charging zero tuition fees in some places. Get board certified, and then migrate back........but I am a cynic)

My brother in law is doing this. He might go for med school, maybe not. He’s in the 3rd year of his naval officer commitment. It’s been a lot of work for him but he’s really driven. He will make out really well when it’s all said and done. He went this route because his father is a surgeon and he might end up going that route but he’s not sure if medicine is for him. He’s basically always working and I think he was ok with that but since he’s in a relationship now it’s much harder on him.

He’s a nuclear engineer for the Navy. I don’t really know many specifics because he lives across the country and I rarely see him.

I have several friends who went to med school and also some that went to military med school (none did ROTC). I am not a doctor though. BUT

Two of the biggest factors into getting into med school (and most grad schools) are 1) grades, 2) testing score (MCAT, LSAT, GRE) etc. Much further down the pole are A) what UG school you went to, B) difficulty of major (chem engineering vs. pre-med), C) interview, D) soft factors.

One of my best friends did art theater undergrad with minor in chem (close to 4.0 and took the pre-med courses, with first two years at CC) and did well on his tests, and got into most of the schools he applied to. I know other people who did chem E (closer to 3.0) with similar test scores and got into fewer schools. Both with same socio-economic backgrounds.

Essentially if you know you are going to go to grad school, I wouldnt worry too much about the undergrad name but instead focusing on getting as high of scores / gpa as possible. There is a huge hedge on if you are not sure you are going to go to grad school or are not as smart as you think you are.

A close friend of mine is a physician in the navy. She did not do ROTC in college. Navy paid her way through medical school, and now, X years in (maybe seven but I could very well be wrong about that), she's a Lieutenant Commander and will be getting out soon. She has a great civilian job already lined up for after she gets out.

She loves not carrying student debt (and she's used that financial freedom to build a considerable amount of wealth). She's paid a salary below but close enough to what she might make in civilian practice. She HATES the Navy bureaucratic lunacy and its outdated technology (for example, urgent medical records have to be couriered across town rather than transmitted electronically, if I accurately recall a story she told me recently). She HATES that she was deployed for six months of her then very young daughter's life. She's only been deployed once, though.

On balance, she feels she made the right decision by taking this route.

I met and chatted with a guy recently who's a Navy physician. He did not go ROTC. I believe he joined the Navy and then learned about its program to pay for medical school, so he applied to schools. He got in and the Navy paid for it. He's now working at a hospital on a large Marine Corps base and absolutely loves it. He's been deployed to Afghanistan multiple times and doesn't regret going at all. He would not go back and change anything.

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War is god

NROTC is not generally the route to becoming a Navy Doctor. It is designed to bring in war fighters, surface, aviation and sub-surface, not Staff Corps. It does have a nursing program, though. If he wants to go NROTC, he could go surface, then after a couple of years, apply to med school. If he gets accepted, then he could possibly get the Navy to pay for it, with a payback, of course. There are other programs for military doctors he should look into.

Disclaimer: I am not on military scholarship, but I have ~8 friends in med school who are.

I'm not sure about ROTC in undergrad because of the same reasons posted above- mainly the big time commitment. Grades, service, and test scores are extremely important in the application process, so anyone that wants to do it really needs to excel academically. For instance, at my school 8700 people applied for 184 spots and the average GPA was a 3.8.

Depending on how much the undergraduate institution costs, he may be better off to pay through subsidized loans because med school is wildly expensive, has very few scholarships, and the loans aren't subsidized. Once he gets in to med school, he can apply for the Health Professions Scholarship Program which will give a really nice sign on bonus, stipend, and cover all of school. After school, most graduates go on to military residency and owe 7 years. From what I know about the commitment in med school, my friends didn't have any commitments during the first academic year, but they're all at OCS over the summer.

It's been a number of years, but I had classmates do this. I think their obligation put them in the military through their 30s but they had no college debt.

Be very wary of what the Navy is offering, because they have the power to change it at any time during service. Case in point, my little brother (he is my "little" through Big Bros/Big Sis that my then-girlfriend/later fiance/now wife helped mentor & raise since age 10) went Navy with the intent of getting them to help him with med school. While he is a Corpsman stationed at Lejeune, around 2010-2011 they changed his contract and said they would not be paying those bills, even though he had 5-6 years service and several tours under his belt. I remember him being demoralized - his goal was to have attended UNC Med School by now.

1. I previously (2008-2016) worked on three different Navy EHRs and this is a false statement.

2. Join the military during wartime and not expect to get deployed? I spent an unaccompanied year in Korea came home transferred from Camp Pendleton to Little Creek VA and deployed for seven months a few weeks after checking in.

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All I Wanted Was A Pepsi, Just One Pepsi

Team Zoot, Team Zoot Mid-Atlantic

Lots of good info here. Thank you