[themantalope]

>Many med students today feel that they can't become GPs because they simply won't make enough to pay back their student loans.

I'm at a private (but good) medical school and this is definitely a problem. My tuition (not including living expenses) is about $50,000 per year. And to be honest, there isn't a huge difference in tuition between most private and public medical schools. I'm from NYS, which does a pretty good job subsidizing its state schools. When I was applying to medical school, the in-state price was around $35,000 per year. However, just over the border in Pennsylvania the price at Pitt (which is public) was around $48,000 per year, for out of state students, and maybe 40 or 42k for in state students.

I went to an in state school for undergrad, and I'm very fortunate to have no debt from that. However, many of my classmates who went to good private undergrad schools (Ivy league etc) will have (a lot) of debt from both undergrad and med school. They literally have no choice - they need to go into a high paying specialty if they ever want to pay their loans off.