neurosurgery vs. investment banking... advice?

Doing anything 100hrs per week when you don't love it is going to be pure hell. Half the neurosurg residents I see every day look like hell, the others are laughing having a good time. Obviously half of them made a good choice.

One thing to remember: the prestige of being a physician wears off pretty fast when you spend 24-7 in the hospital, where guess what, everyone else is a doctor. So you've got an MD, well, well, well, take a number.

Your parents might brag about you. And your chances of getting laid on the one night per month you go out might be slightly increased compared to the average schmo, but that's pretty much it. If you don't like working with people and get easily annoyed at the stupid crap people do, you are guaranteed to hate your job and will become an a-hole very quickly. But if you like a lot of drama and can keep a clear head when pressure's on, you'll have a lot of fun.

Surg residents and IB interns take tons of abuse from higher ups. If you can roll with it, you'll be ok. Kind of a wash there. Megalomaniacs actually do ok in this environment, I think, because they never believe the insulting feedback they deal with on a daily basis. Just a theory of mine...

I like this kid, he is a total a$$ and will either excel or get killed within a year. Id suggest i-banking.

Forget your GPA its all about value add and your ability to demonstrate that to me. Look us up when you are ready for a real job.

-Managing Director Goldman

I'm in the midst of going from hedge fund trader to ER doctor. For anyone debating the two fields try reading the two books below. Anyway, both are going to be grueling jobs and are not easy to get. To get into a big I bank you're going to need to come from a top school, perform well, get internships, and pay your dues. Then the real work starts. To get into neurosurgery is even harder, you're going to need to graduate college with a 3.5+ gpa, crush the mcat, make it through 4 years of medical school, and then another 7-9 years of residency depending on exactly what you want to do....then you will be an attending.

I-banking: Monkey Business

Neurosurgery: When the Air Hits Your Brain

Why not start your own business and become the corporate teet rather than suck on one?

To the OP - you sound pretty young and naive. Every med school applicant on earth always says they want to do it 'because I want to help people.' Hey, you can 'help people' by being a nurse or a teacher or a garbage man or a custodian or a farmer. You don't have to be a neurosurgeon to help people. So the lowly family doc doesn't 'help people'? The doc working for nothing at a refugee camp with Doctors without Borders isn't 'helping people'?

The reality is that most med students don't settle on their eventual residency until they are well along into their clinical rotations in third year. Unless you have personal experience from a parent or relative, there's not much way you can really beforehand if you are going to like a certain specialty or not. Your image of a TV neurosurgeon saving lives every hour might be very different from your clinical rotation where you see an endless bunch of old people with back pain who want you to operate on their herniated discs. I agree with what one of the earlier posters wrote - half the neurosurg residents I knew were happy, and other half were divorcing and miserable.

Your choices between 2 potentially lucrative professions tells me your real motivation is money. I can tell you from my own experience that money does not equal happiness if you don't like what you're doing or if you have no free time. You've heard it before, but it's true.