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by Thriptic
3846 days ago
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It's quite a different story now. You're looking at a ~14 year incubation period before you're making those types of numbers as a physician (bachelors, med school, residency, fellowship), plus having to take on significant debt. An overwhelmingly large number of physicians also report a low quality of life and urge others not to enter the profession. I'm not sure how it is for lawyers, but I would imagine there is also a significant up front investment before you start making real money (if you ever do). Contrast this with CS where you can make 6 figures right out of college with significantly less pain during the training process. |
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Law school alone (ignoring the cost of passing the bar or anything else) is prohibitively expensive for many people.
For 2015-16, Yale law school is $78,000/yr[0], Harvard is $85,000[1] (including an optional $2400 health plan), Columbia is $65,588[2], and Stanford is $54,183[3]. So you're looking at $165-255,000 in fees, expenses and tuition over three years.
The majority of my friends who are attorneys and have taken the bar also spent several months (up to 6-8 but that does not seem to be the norm) doing nothing but studying for it full time. Everyone took out additional loans to cover expenses, or lived with their parents for free. So it's not uncommon to have $150k in just law school student loans when all is said and done.
So the median is still higher for attorneys than for developers, but most attorneys would have student loan obligations in the 1.2-2x median salary range, so often several times more than they're making right out of school.
It was bad enough making $45k as a junior developer with $20k in student loans, I can't imagine making $60k as a junior associate in a similar area with $175k in student loans.
[0] https://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/cost-financial-aid/cost-... [1] http://hls.harvard.edu/dept/sfs/financial-aid-policy-overvie... [2] http://web.law.columbia.edu/admissions/graduate-legal-studie... [3] https://law.stanford.edu/apply/tuition-financial-aid/cost-of...