It is a well known fact is that if you aspire to be a doctor you should have parents who love you more than the national average of ‘parental love for their children’. This is basically because you don’t start earning before you are in your thirties and thus need to be financially supported (and also emotionally, especially when you are in 3rd MBBS and reading PSM).

Specialisation, post MBBS, is socially and economically mandatory. Apparently the torture you go through in your MBBS is not enough and needs a healthy supplement in the form of ‘Post Graduation’ studies, by going through grueling PG CET / NEET . Students wishing to pursue their PG in the US have to give the USMLE exam.

Here’s a sarcastic approach over the factors that influence their choice of pursuing a PG education in India vs US –

You know you are an All India PG CET aspirant when –

1. You spend close to 50 rupees per day on your essential and non- essential needs and still manage to save some money out of it on some days. So you can literally survive on ‘peanuts’.

2. For you the actual ‘honeymoon period’ during MBBS was your final year when you were buried under the burden of studies and you thoroughly enjoyed it.

3. Every year you set aside the four days of your college festival in February to solve Entrance exam questions.

4. You bunked your AIIMS trip in second MBBS just to attend an orientation lecture of a PG CET coaching class.

5. You think emergency nights are the best part of internship – they effectively help you to curtail your sleeping hours and put in those extra hours in studying for the entrance exams.

6. You have never felt the need for an alarm clock, you are genetically programmed to sleep for just four hours a day and cannot believe your luck in case you get called for duty while you are sleeping.

7. You believe variety is the spice of life – India offers great variety in case of patients, diseases, treatments sought and complications . Everything is experimental.

8. You are very good at sign language – with patients of varied dialects and backgrounds coming to you for treatment, you have to often let your hands do the talking and your mind do the face reading.

9. You have a girlfriend / boyfriend who wishes to do PG CET and settle in India; so you are expected to follow suit as you’ll have already decided on the names of your future children and registered them in the best schools of India for an admission that is probably going to take place ten years later.

You know you are an USMLE aspirant when :

1. You prefer Yankee to Bharati, Stella to Kamala, Nurses to Sisters and Burger to Bhurji.
2. You are a big fan of the ‘YO’ communtiy and cannot do without your daily dose of Entourage, Two and a Half men, Castle and House MD.

3. You don’t believe in praise and goodwill – you expect the fruits of your labour to be measured only in hard cash.

4. You wish to attend your workplace wearing clothes straight out of ‘Gossip Girl’ without the added advantages of you being the centre of discussion during your colleagues lunch-hour office banter (and their not-so-innocent fantasies).

5. You consider the weather in Kashmir too sunny for your survival.

6. Your dream mode of transport is skateboarding (thanks to the potholes, this is never going to be possible in India).

7. You are exasperated when you don’t find M n M’s in Big Bazaar, even though Walmart has an entire section dedicated to MDH masalas.