Breaking Into IB As An Orthopaedic Surgeon

Originally posted on WSO by Doc3691

Doc3691:

"Hey there,

I need some honest advice.

I'm a 31-year-old orthopaedic surgeon in training from a European country.

Despite all the work I've done to become an orthopaedic surgeon and having 8 years of experience in the field, I have found myself helplessly enamored with finance.

Must have caught the bug around 6 years ago when I started investing my hard-earned cash… initially?started with bonds, then stocks then derivatives. Kept on diving deep down the rabbit hole reading about all things business & finance and realized I was spending most of my free time reading and studying finance (even textbooks by John C?Hull?etc).

I have come to the realisation that despite all my hard work and dedication towards medicine and surgery, I have lost interest in surgery and I want to pivot into finance, preferably?IB?given the fact that learning?financial modeling?and getting deal experience are both so vital to the profession and open so many doors.

I was thinking of applying to a top business school to?do an?MBA?or MSc finance in order to help with my applications (tried applying as a grad this time round [currently completing an unrelated MSc] but was not successful).

I would love to have your take on it, specifically whether this is a realistic goal, whether the?MBA/MScFin would be helpful, and other possible suitable routes to finance other than grad roles given my healthcare experience.

Thank you for your time."

Bigbodybugatti:

"Given your background, I would leverage your medical degree into working at a healthcare-focused?VC?or?PE?firm - know a ton of former doctors who do this. Finance professionals always need someone around with a medical background to do proper?due diligence?(essentially be able to say if a device/drug works from a scientific standpoint) on portcos and possible acquisitions.

Given your age, I would not think going into investment banking would be feasible/enjoyable for you. You would be too old to come in as an analyst, on the older side even for an associate, and this would require an?MBA?- at this point that would be a ridiculous amount of educational experience/pedigree for you.

Working for a healthcare-focused?buyside shop would?be attainable and give you the opportunity to make much more money than trying to break into?IB. It's unclear whether you have or are in the process of getting your MD - finish it if you haven't done so already, then begin networking and reaching out to shops. If you truly have done your research on finance and are knowledgeable from a technical perspective, you'd be a shoo-in at a lot of firms if you can interview well - especially for the medical device industry as a former orthopaedic surgeon."

Blue9:

"Bro wtf

I'm going to give you the best career advice you'll receive:

Stay as orthopaedic surgeon. Relocate countries if you have to (USA/UK pay crazily well) but don't go into finance.

You've lost interest in surgery? You'll lose interest in finance too. We all get bored with things after a whole - that's life. Suggest you find what it was that interested you with medicine in the first place and rekindle that spark. Reading a few books about finance and investing a couple thousand on the side is painting a lovely picture of finance, but the reality is completely different.

Realistically, you will need an?MBA?to get into?IB. 1 year to study and apply, 2 years for the degree, means you'll be well into your mid-30s by the time you start full-time and that's assuming you have no issues with hiring (because firms ARE going to ask why a mid-30s surgeon wants to work with 21-year-olds punching numbers into an excel spreadsheet, and you're going to have a hard time justifying any reason you attempt to provide). Multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars/euros were lost in both expenditure and?opportunity cost from studying?rather than working.

Then, when its 3 am and you're updating slide 47 of the?pitch deck, reformatting all mentions of 'Mn' to 'MN' because your MD insists that the correct abbreviation for 'million' must be entirely capitalised, for a proposal that you know is a pointless waste of your time because you know your bank will never win this one anyway, you are going to question what the F you are doing with your life, why the F you just wasted 3-4 years to get into this position, and why the F you gave up the role of actually helping real people (and getting paid crazy sums of money to do it) through major surgeries (cousin is an orthopaedic surgeon; I've seen first hand how important your work is) to align logos on an electronic document that nobody really cares about.

Sure, you could pivot to some healthcare-focused?VC?fund (or try and start there immediately, which will be ridiculously more difficult), and you may have a better time of it, but you are still going to come up against day after day of menial task and you'll wonder how on Earth you managed to paint the grass so green on the other side."

Continue reading here.