I'm not sure how that's remotely sustainable to waste that much time commuting.
OTOH, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and a few other cities look promising.
Some of the programs in Manhattan and Brooklyn are paying ~55000. She's in (we're in) >400000 in debt from the med school loans. There's no chance we can go there. (Maybe if they paid ~100000.)
I wonder if it is some sort of nerds attracting nerds phenomenon, or just overachievers meeting in college.
Either way I feel your pain with residency and debt.
[1] http://www.med.nyu.edu/school/admissions/fees-and-financial-...
> NYU estimates med school costs at $80k per year [1], for four years.
Pretty much this. Private med schools are more expensive than public. Plus little things like buying cars, paying rent, etc. add up.
Can you elaborate on Atlanta's poor QoL?
You'll need a car to get anywhere and you're going to spend a lot of time in it. Especially if you live in one of the popular suburbs like Marietta or even Douglasville.
Source: lived in the area a few times.
To be clear, Lithia Springs is as part of Atlanta as Vallejo is part of San Francisco - as Edison is to Manhatten.
You'd need a car to get anywhere if you lived in Vallejo too... And you'd spend a ton of time in it (and about $10 in tolls) to get to Downtown San Francisco.
edit: pros-> good Cost of Living to salary ratio, 4 seasons. cons-> humidity, traffic, public education system, lack of attractions (you can only go to the aquarium so many times).
Prices have risen in the last few years, but anywhere from Midtown to Buckhead to the East Atlanta neighborhoods are great.
https://medicine.ucsf.edu/education/residency/application/co...
For a reasonable place in a good location, you'll end up at about $3000/month (there's a 1 bdrm at 246 2nd St). That's definitely expensive compared to nationwide averages, but you won't need a car if you both work in the city. As another poster mentioned, UCSF at Mission Bay (and elsewhere actually) has lots of purpose built housing at below market rates. Contact them!
Look south of 280. Pacific and Daly City are fine, or some parts of SF. Rent is kind of outrageous, a 2br house near me is going for $4200, though it's really nice, 1920s style, and it's a house, with an extensive downstairs bonus room, separate living and dining room, and so forth. If you were more interested in saving money and it's just you and your wife, by guess is that you could knock a grand off that and still be walking distance from two bart stations, the J, K, and M lines, and the 43 that goes right by UCSF parnassus.
It's not hard to access the rest of SF from that corner, there's all kinds of public transportation options near SF City college, Portola, Excelsior, Mission Terrace, etc.
That's a ton to be spending on rent in such an unfashionable corner, but jeez, we're talking about the opportunity to do a residency at UCSF. Again, not sure about your salary, and the loans for med school can be pretty heavy, But even if you only earn half the median salary of a developer, you can make this work.
Lots of spec homes being built.
I had a roommate who was an ER nurse. She worked shifts at an SF hospital and also commuted over to Oakland (Highland) to work shifts for lower pay. I asked her why she'd drive all that way when she could just pick up more shifts for higher pay in SF. She said the experience she got in Oakland was so much more valuable. In SF, it was lots of concerned parents bringing in their children because they'd had a fever of almost 100F for over an hour! At Highland, it was gunshot victims, illegal immigrants with obscure tropical diseases and just a much larger variety of medical needs. She claimed that on a per hour basis, the experience in Oakland was 10 times more valuable than in SF.
So not only is the city pricing itself out of existence, as you mentioned, but it's pricing itself into a monoculture that takes away a lot of the diversity of the people there. And doctors might want a bit more of that diversity during their training. Then again, if she's studying for a specialty in treating carpal tunnel syndrome or interested in doing Lasik surgery, there's probably no better place on earth to be :-)