You read the scans other doctors order, and your report is what decides the next move.
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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.
The median pay is about $420,860 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $89,010 at the lower end to about $594,410 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
13 to 14 years after high school, on the usual route.
$200,000 to $340,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
Yes. It is a regulated job, so you need a license or registration before you can work.
Moderate 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
$420,860
Bottom tenth
$89,010
Top tenth
$594,410
The national median is $420,860 a year. The bottom tenth earn $89,010 or less and the top tenth $594,410 or more (2025 federal wage survey). That survey counts radiologists who are paid as employees. Partners who own a share of a private imaging group are not counted.
$71,052 to $82,992 a year
Duke University Hospital pay from the intern year to the fifth year, 2026 to 2027
Each hospital sets its own scale. Five paid years on a resident salary, well below what radiologists earn later, while the interest on your medical school loans keeps running. Nationally, the AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges) survey of 345 teaching hospitals puts the average first-year stipend at $68,166 as of July 1, 2025, and about $81,807 in the fifth year. Read from the AAMC's data, downloaded in a browser with Claude in Chrome on 6 November 2026, because aamc.org refuses our checker.
$506,010 a year or more
25% of employed radiologists earn this or more, 2025
Partners are not counted. Many private radiology groups hire you on salary and later vote you in as a partner with a share of the group's income, so ask how long that track is before you sign.
Roughly, all in
$200,000 to $340,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a community college transfer into an in state public university, then an in state public medical school, plus the Medical College Admission Test, the cost of applying and interviewing, and the national licensing exams. The high end is four full years of undergraduate study and a private medical school at around $65,000 a year. Residency and fellowship are paid employment, so the years after medical school add board application and exam fees rather than tuition. Most graduates borrow, and interest during training is not included above.
Most graduates borrow, and the debt is large. Fill out the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) every year, and if you work at a nonprofit hospital look at PSLF (Public Service Loan Forgiveness), which wipes the balance after 10 years of qualifying payments.
Malpractice insurance paid
Always covered by the hospital or the group, and it is not cheap coverage.
You can read from home
More than almost any other doctor. Nights and weekends are often covered from a home workstation.
Signing bonuses and loan repayment
Common outside big cities, where groups find it harder to hire.
No clinic inbox
You do not carry a panel of patients calling you about prescriptions.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Thirteen years after high school before you read scans on your own.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Biology, chemistry, physics and math, with grades strong enough for a competitive college.
Bachelor's degree
4 years
Any major, as long as you finish the pre-medical science courses and sit the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test).
Medical school
4 years
Two years of science, then hospital rotations. You graduate as a Doctor of Medicine (MD) or a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO).
Intern year
1 year
One general clinical year, usually internal medicine or surgery, before imaging training starts.
Diagnostic radiology residency
4 years
Four accredited years covering every body part and every imaging method, with rising independence and a lot of overnight call.
Board certification
During and after residency
The American Board of Radiology runs a Core exam after 36 months of residency, then a Certifying exam you can take 12 months after residency ends.
Physics
Physics is tested on the radiology board exams. Radiation, sound waves and magnets are the tools.
Biology
You have to know normal anatomy cold before abnormal means anything.
Chemistry
Contrast agents, radioactive tracers and how the body handles them.
Computer science
The whole job runs through imaging software, and pattern recognition tools are now part of it.
Every state licenses doctors through its own medical board, and you hold a separate license in each state whose patients you read for. That last part matters in radiology, because reading a scan from a hospital in another state means being licensed there too. The exams themselves are national: the USMLE (United States Medical Licensing Examination) sequence during medical school and residency, then certification by the American Board of Radiology.
Public medical schools
Much cheaper if you are a resident of that state, and many of them favor in-state applicants heavily.
Private medical schools
No state preference, far higher tuition.
Osteopathic schools
Award a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) degree and feed into the same residency programs.
The match
Radiology residency spots are assigned by a national computer match. You rank programs, they rank you, and the algorithm settles it.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Interventional radiology
You stop only reading and start treating, threading catheters and wires through blood vessels. Now a separate residency track as well as a fellowship.
Neuroradiology
Brain and spine. Hard, respected, and always in demand.
Breast imaging
Mammograms and biopsies, with real patient contact and mostly predictable hours.
Pediatric radiology
Children's scans are not small adult scans, and very few people do this well.
Visual pattern recognition
Some people simply see the thing on the scan faster. It can be trained, but it helps to start with it.
Tolerance for sitting still
You will spend most of a shift in a dark room with a headset on.
Research during medical school
Radiology is competitive, and publications move you up a rank list.
Comfort saying you are not sure
A hedged report that names what you cannot rule out is better medicine than a confident wrong one.
Imaging was the first part of medicine where pattern recognition software got genuinely good, so people have been predicting the end of radiology for a decade. What actually happened is that scan volumes kept climbing and groups kept hiring. The realistic picture is that software flags findings and measures things for you, and a licensed doctor still signs the report and carries the legal responsibility for it. Learning to use the tools well is a better bet than hoping they go away.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
You sit down in a dim reading room at a workstation with two or three big monitors and a worklist that already has 80 studies on it. Chest, abdomen, a head CT (computed tomography) from the emergency department that jumps the queue, an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) knee. You dictate a report on each one, phone the doctor directly when a finding is serious, and keep going. Between cases you get pulled to look at something with a surgeon, or to supervise a scan with contrast. The volume is the hard part, not any single case.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
After 2027 the American Board of Radiology replaces the computer-based certifying exam with seven 25-minute oral exams, each with a different examiner. You describe what you see out loud while the examiner listens.
The first radiology board exam is taken after 36 months of residency and runs over three days, about five and a half hours a day.
O*NET (Occupational Information Network) counted about 28,700 employed radiologists in 2025 and projects average growth, with about 700 openings a year.
Radiologists are the doctors everyone talks to and almost nobody meets. Most of your contact with other doctors happens over a phone line, and most patients never learn your name even though you wrote the report that changed their treatment.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Doctors first, then the rest of the field. See every career in health.
Last checked November 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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