Numbers from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) show that just 0.3 percent of enrolling medical students between 2000 and 2020 were aged 40 or older. Montana’s Marie Elwood was a 39-year-old mother of seven when she started. A University of Washington med school grad and new family medicine resident, this is the story of how she made it happen.
A failed attempt at sparking a slave rebellion, John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia showed that violence had become inevitable when it came to resolving the issue of slavery in America. Though rarely remembered, a group of ‘grave robbing’ medical students ensured medical education played its part in one of the most controversial moments in United States history.
Aside from dentists, med students in the U.S. have the largest student loan debts out of all American college graduates and are well ahead of fellow future physicians, internationally. Last year, the median loan debt for medical students was around $207,000; a figure that had increased $40,000 since 2009. Over the last 12 years, that’s a rate three times faster than inflation.
