Med School Grads Go to Work for Hedge Funds

Matthew Alkaitis, a third-year student at Harvard Medical School, is calm, friendly, and a good listener—the kind of qualities you’d want in a doctor. But though he spends 14 hours a day studying for his board exams, the 29-year-old isn’t sure how long he’ll be wearing a white coat. In September, Alkaitis, who also has a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences, will be starting a two-year fellowship at McKinsey & Co., where he’ll be advising clients in the health-care field. “I really hope that my career involves a period of dedicated time taking care of patients,” he says. “But I also have this competing goal to one day start or help build out a company that really adds something new and interesting and innovative to the medical system.”

Like Alkaitis, more people are coming out of medical school and choosing not to practice medicine. Instead, they’re going into business—starting biotech and medical device companies, working at private equity firms, or doing consulting. In a 2016 survey of more than 17,000 med school grads by the Physicians Foundation and health-care recruitment firm Merritt Hawkins, 13.5 percent said they planned to seek a nonclinical job within three years. That’s up from 9.9 percent in 2012. A separate Merritt Hawkins survey asks final-year residents: “If you were to begin your education again, would you study medicine or would you select another field?” In 2015, 25 percent answered “another field,” up from 8 percent in 2006. Among the reasons they cited: a lack of free time, educational debt, and the hassle of dealing with insurance companies and other third-party payers.