Make sure radiation used on patients is exactly right. Physics, a residency, and three board exams.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
Programs in the fields this career usually comes through. Each has its own page: what it takes to get in, the courses you need and what it costs.
The median pay is about $172,250 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $82,110 at the lower end to about $274,110 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
8 to 12 years after high school, on the usual route.
$45,000 to $116,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
It depends where you work. You need a license, certificate or registration in Florida, New York and Texas. Elsewhere there is none to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Very high demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$172,250
Bottom tenth
$82,110
Top tenth
$274,110
The national median is $172,250 a year and the bottom tenth earn $82,110 or less. The wage survey has no separate line for medical physicists: it counts them inside Physicists, where the government's own occupation database lists Medical Physicist as one of the reported job titles. The range covers research physicists as well as hospital ones.
$82,110 to $111,720
The bottom tenth and bottom quarter of physicists, 2025
This covers all physicists, research and hospital, and the survey publishes no starting figure. The supply of clinical medical physicists is limited by residency places, not by how many people want the job.
$111,720 to $222,760
Half of all workers in the 2025 survey earn between these two figures
Board certification and a specialty such as radiation therapy physics are what move clinical physicists through this range.
Roughly, all in
$45,000 to $116,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a four year physics degree at in-state public rates of about $11,000 a year, then a doctorate, which in this field normally comes with no tuition and a living stipend because the department funds you, plus the three board exams at a few hundred dollars each. The high end swaps the funded doctorate for an accredited master's degree in medical physics, which you usually pay for yourself at $30,000 to $70,000 in total. Residency afterwards is a paid position, so the expensive stretch is the graduate degree in the middle, not the end. The trade is time: the funded doctorate takes five or six years instead of two.
File the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) every year. Residency is a paid position, so the expensive stretch is the graduate degree in the middle, not the end.
A paid residency
Unlike most clinical training, the two year residency is a salaried hospital post.
Hospital benefits
Health cover, retirement savings with a match, and paid leave.
Public Service Loan Forgiveness
Most cancer centers are nonprofit or public, so ten years of payments can clear remaining federal student loans.
Conference and certification support
Employers normally pay for the continuing education that keeps your board certification current.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Long and narrow. Every step has to be accredited by the right body or the next step is closed to you.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Physics, calculus and chemistry. This is a physics career first and a health career second.
Bachelor's degree in physics
4 years
Four years. Engineering physics or a closely related degree is usually accepted too.
Accredited graduate program
2 to 6 years
A master's, doctorate, certificate or Doctor of Medical Physics program accredited by CAMPEP (the Commission on Accreditation of Medical Physics Educational Programs).
Part 1 board exam
Once a year, usually August
A computer-based exam in two sections, general and clinical. You can take it while still enrolled in an accredited program.
Accredited residency, then Parts 2 and 3
2 to 3 years
A paid two year clinical residency, then the specialty written exam and finally a remote oral exam.
Physics
Take the hardest version available. Everything else is built on it.
Calculus
Not optional for a physics degree, and this route runs through one.
Biology
You need to understand what radiation does to tissue, not only to matter.
Computer science
Treatment planning, modeling and quality assurance all run on code.
The American Board of Radiology certifies medical physicists in three stages: a Part 1 qualifying exam in general and clinical physics, a Part 2 exam in your specialty of therapeutic, diagnostic or nuclear medical physics, and a Part 3 oral certifying exam taken remotely. You must pass each before attempting the next. Eligibility runs through accredited programs: an accredited graduate or doctoral program, an accredited residency, or an approved structured mentorship. Florida, New York and Texas license medical physicists by law, and you cannot practice there without it. Elsewhere board certification is what hospitals require.
Accredited master's programs
The most common route. Two years, directly aimed at the clinical exams and residency.
Accredited doctoral programs
Longer, funded, and the better bet if you want academic or research work as well as clinic.
Certificate programs
For people who already hold a physics doctorate and need the accredited medical physics coursework.
Doctor of Medical Physics programs
A professional doctorate that builds the residency into the degree, so you finish clinically ready.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Therapeutic medical physics
Radiation treatment for cancer. The largest branch and the one most jobs are in.
Diagnostic medical physics
Imaging equipment: computed tomography, magnetic resonance, x-ray. Testing, safety and image quality.
Nuclear medical physics
Radioactive tracers and therapies given to the patient rather than aimed at them.
Health physics
Radiation protection across a whole facility. A related title the same wage survey covers.
Programming
Python and scripting for quality assurance, planning checks and automation.
Hands-on instrument work
Undergraduate lab experience with detectors and electronics counts for a lot.
A summer in a hospital physics department
Hard to arrange and worth the effort, because it decides whether you want the clinical version.
Patience with paperwork
A large part of the job is documented checks that regulators and accreditors will read.
The number of accredited residency places is the real limit on this career, not the number of graduate places. Every year more people finish accredited graduate programs than there are residency posts for, and without a residency you cannot complete board certification, and without certification most hospitals will not hire you. Ask any program you are considering what share of its graduates matched into a residency, and treat a vague answer as an answer.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Morning starts with machine checks: is the linear accelerator delivering the dose it says it is, within a fraction of a percent. Then treatment plans to review, because a physicist signs off that what is about to be aimed at a patient is right. Afternoon might be a measurement session on a machine that is out of clinical use, a safety survey, or a meeting with oncologists about a difficult case. There is always documentation, because the regulator and the accreditor both want to see the record.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
American Board of Radiology certification runs Part 1 and Part 2 as written exams once a year, usually in August, then a Part 3 oral certifying exam offered twice a year in which you talk an examiner through real clinical judgment.
The American Association of Physicists in Medicine, founded in 1958, says it is made up of more than 8,000 scientists working with radiation in medicine. It is a small field, and people in it tend to know each other.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Diagnostics and lab first, then the rest of the field. See every career in health.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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