Most overrated degree in your imo?

Graduate salary average -

Computer Science - £23,628
Engineering - £27,452
Mathematics - £24,119
Medicine - £28,674

Medicine - every grad goes into it
CompSci - mix of grads going into different areas doing different jobs
Maths - mix of grads going into different areas and doing different jobs
Engineering - primarily skewed towards grads actually going into engineering

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Generalisations being typically vague as usual though, it's also so incredibly dependent on where in the UK they get employed. For example, if I'd stayed in Plymouth after my degree, i'd have started out closer to £15k. The post that I had quoted was weighted in such a way that it was more wrong than the averages i posted. Starting salaries are wild and varied, but those are generally just outliers to the norm.

Graduate salary average -

Computer Science - £23,628
Engineering - £27,452
Mathematics - £24,119
Medicine - £28,674

Of course you can't compare graduate salaries.

Take maths graduates as an example. They normally end up on relatively high average starting salaries but always fall short of engineers and medics - why? Looking at statistics in 2015, a large percentage of them (40.4%) actually went into finance and business, professions which tend to pay higher starting salaries. However, at the same time, mathematics graduates were almost twice as likely to go on to further study (23.3%) than the graduate cohort as a whole (12.1%). A high percentage also went into education.

It's not that good opportunities aren't open to them, rather that the mindset of a mathematician is completely different to the mindset of an engineering graduate or a finance graduate, who both have a much better idea of what career they want to go into even before they've began studying for their degree. I think maths is a very strong degree if you know what you want to do.

History.

:'(

History is underrated man

Congratulations, you got a 2.1 in the three easiest modules on a law degree. What's also funny is you changed course after you essentially blew your chance to get a city training contract.

Don't take this the wrong way but bioscience degrees are not the most academically demanding either with a fair bit of overlap with medicine so it is no wonder intercalaters can get decent results.

The funny thing is you can get into medical school without demonstrating any of the qualities you mention, yet doctors and medical students are supposed to be a cut above on those qualities? Doesn't really follow to me.

Especially after seeing some of the mistakes doctors have made first hand it becomes quite clear in fact that the medical profession is nothing special. And as for the personal responsibility part, the GMC bends over backwards not to find doctors unfit to practice through incompetence, mental health and addiction issues to a level that beggars belief in certain cases.

In certain regions (generally with a low cost of living) there are no jobs that pay better than being a consultant so enlighten me as to how, in quite a few circumstances, similar or greater financial reward could be obtained with less effort? The only way you could exceed these earnings would be starting your own business, which of course anyone is welcome to try.

I really wish you could actually come up with something a little less predictable - you disappoint me - "oh, you didn't do badly? oh well I guess I need to move the goal posts somehow" *rolls eyes* come on, mate.

hah, oh wow, I bet you're such an interesting person in that case...

which did you go to?
this is probably where you seize the opportunity to give me a made up story of where you went, concerning those universit"ies".

it kind of does though in the sense that I said it...

Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic

This hurts

ASNaC is an awesome degree.

Hmm. I assure you the level of overlap between the two years of say a biochemistry or a biomedical engineering degree and two years of medicine is minimal. This is akin to saying that that there is overlap between physics at A-level and physics at university, therefore a physics A-level student should get a first in BSc or even an MSc in physics if they joined into the third year...this is very much counterintuitive. Also bear in mind that medicine graduates have little research/lab skills yet the third year is mostly research-based for most courses. Regarding higher research degrees, I can tell you from some experience that compared to three years of medicine, most clinicians embarking on them find them a bit of a joke really...no nights, fewer weekends and most days you even go home on time.

I actually agree that the biosciences aren't very academically demanding but then again I always thought physics and maths were a bit of doss, though highly respectable in their own right. Using a multifaceted and specialised set of skills and knowledge and applying them in high risk situations to solve often unique scenarios towards a greater purpose, i.e. the service of humanity, I always found more challenging.

The point is that different things suit different people. What I find challenging and what you might find academically demanding are different things. However, hard graft is a constant (as Edison said Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety nine percent perspiration) that is respected across fields and even more than wits perhaps that is the one attribute that medicine prizes above all.



I could argue that they are. The rigour of medical application process. 6 months of voluntary work. Entrance exams. Weeks of shadowing. Rigorous interviews, many using situational judgement and roleplay scenarios. As someone who has been part of the delivery process of these, I would say that medical applicants have never been so microscopically examined on so many facets, such as organisation, comms, teamwork, critical thinking, situational judgement, empathy etc. This is not at oxbridge, this is the standard at pretty much any med school these days. I'd wager no course enforces such a huge amount of scrutiny as standard. Then there is the process of medical schooling itself.



This is slanderous. The GMC is probably the most aggressive regulator on the planet. You can look up case files on MTPS website and see how ridiculously stringent it can be. The GMC uses an approach to convicting doctors that is based "balance of probabilities" rather than the legal view of "beyond reasonable doubt." Even if you have mental problems, the GMC will come after you and put regulations on your file. Effectively ending your career. This is excluding things like revalidation, yearly ARCP reviews, TABS exercises which involve 360 degree feedback from allied health professionals even clerks twice a year, ridiculous amounts of portfolio reflections to learn from mistakes, never event meetings, bleep meetings, clinical supervisor reviews etc.
"Mistakes" is a strong word. It is often very easy to say this with hindsight. The only assured outcome in medicine is death...I'm surprised more people don't die given the shoestring budgets and pressures currently afflicting healthcare. This blame culture is more a reflection of society's inability to accept the risks inherent in medical practice.


Under the new consultant contract, the starting salary of a consultant with a decade of postgrad training will be £50k and they will work 1 weekend in 3. For a course with ridiculously stringent and expensive training which involves often yearly exams, with gruelling conditions at work, do you think this is fair reward? In terms of the highest band, I believe 90k is being discussed at the moment, dependent on the amount out of hours commitments and arbitrary managerial performance measures. The current max of around 100k is achieved usually after 20 years as a consultant i.e. near retirement.
You are comparing apples and oranges. The demographic in these regions is unlikely to have put in that much effort into building their career from GCSEs onwards. If you were to compare them to professionals with similar grades and similar hours and intensity of work and similar out of work commitments. You could make the same demographic statement about economists or bankers working in inner London etc. The only difference in medicine is that (a) they are not paid as well as those people; and (b) the practice of medicine can often not be restricted to a geographically limited area (people get sick everywhere).
I think a large part of this is the NHS. People expect doctors to slave away for them because of a sense of entitlement to healthcare. They somehow have these utopian visions of how much money doctors have and that's all they care about and therefore this is leading to diminishing respect. As someone who has experienced healthcare in other countries from both sides, I think that a privitised system will probably lead to more respect for doctors as people find themselves having to pay for the privilege of seeing a doctor and getting extra often unneeded investigations such as happens in the US and Western Europe. I think this part of why doctors are so respected in the US and other parts of the world, because they give people what they want, and use a shotgun approach to health.

I actually think that in deprived areas 50k for a beginning consultant which is over 3 times the average salary is "enough". The usual med student/doctor BS of how anyone that earns less didn't work for their grades at school is alive and well I see. A lot of other professional careers including those you mentioned don't have the longevity of medicine hence comparing early career salaries is a bit disingenuous 😉

Dentistry. The sheer snobbery I've experienced from people whose life goal is to examine teeth is incredible.