What are the highest paid medical residency programs in the US? I’m making an internal bet that if you’re reading this, there’s an 85% likelihood that you’re Indian. If you’re white, or something else but not Indian and reading this, then you’ve got a God complex. If you’re Indian and not a doctor yet, then you’re insecure and you’re trying to secure a self-descriptor that will instantly make you a God among those who know you’re a doctor. But the white doctors will still think you’re shit – remember that.
Now you know what I think of Indians. And doctors. And white doctors. Just kidding. If you are worried about racism, check out our article about the 10 least racist states in America.
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We love doctors and doctors love helping people, not getting rich! Those who don’t come from money must understand that it’s a major investment to go into medicine. So it’s only natural for most of them to get insight into the 13 highest paid medical residency programs in the US. Of course, this doesn’t have to mean anything later on, as future medical practitioners are poised to earn much more, even in fields which traditionally tend to offer less money initially. If you are wondering which medical specialties are the best-paid ones, here’s our list of Top Ten Best-Paid Medical Specialties.
As you are about to see, differences between medical residency programs can be substantial and those short on cash might appreciate a bonus of some $10,000 at the end of a fiscal year. If money is a resident’s primary concern during the time of the given program, however, this list will likely be appreciated by some of them. If not, try to take a look at the bigger picture. Things do tend to change over time and the best-earning residencies don’t necessarily have to become best-earning jobs in the medical field.
In order to compile the list, we used the latest available info from multiple sources. The Association of American Medical Colleges publishes a yearly survey of resident/fellow stipends and benefits since 1968. Their survey doesn’t give the info on which residency programs are the most lucrative in terms of remuneration, but offers quality info on all 8 post-MD years from up to 247 medical institutions in the U.S. You can check their list for 2014 (latest available one) here. In order to pinpoint the residency programs with the highest salaries, we had to resort to other sources of information. Medscape conducts their own survey every year as well, but they are collecting the info directly from residents instead of getting it from medical institutions like the AAMC does.
This type of info is more liable to be flawed given the nature of the source, but it is still the best way to determine which of the residencies qualify for the 13 highest paid medical residency programs in the US (people lie equally across the board, get it?). Here are their respective lists for years 2014 and 2015, and we’ll calculate the salaries based on average info from both of them. This allows us to see the changes in salaries between the years, but yet again, the source of the info might not be as accurate as it should be. For instance, a resident’s salary depends on the region in which the resident conducts his/her practice. Maybe Medscape has managed to collect info on a specific residency program with its better-paid region being predominant in the sample in one year, and lower-paid regions being dominant in another year. This creates discrepancies of considerable size in some fields, but the average result is still our best bet at giving you the nationwide info. After all, differences between residency salaries aren’t that high in the end. A few hundred dollars per month might not mean much in the end. One also has to take into account the cost of living. Salaries and the cost of living usually go hand-in-hand, hence residents that earn more (in certain regions) will usually have to spend more on their basic needs correspondingly.
