Best Radiology Residency Programs

38. Emory University

Best Radiology Residency Programs in 2022

This post lists the 10 best radiology residency programs as well as some honorable mentions. Read to learn about key elements to consider when choosing a residency program.

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Best Radiology Programs in 2022

Johns Hopkins University
Harvard University (Massachusetts General Hospital)
University of Pennsylvania (Perelman)
University of California – San Francisco
Washington University in St. Louis
Duke University
Stanford University
University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
Yale University
Columbia University

The U.S. News and World Report determines its list of top programs by looking at a variety of factors, including “faculty resources, the academic achievements of entering students, and qualitative assessments by schools and residency directors.” There is a focus on research productivity and NIH funding.

As I’ve mentioned in other articles, the “best program” will be different for different people and it won’t necessarily be a program on this list for everyone. I’ve found that program culture, clinical training/teaching reputation, program size, resident happiness, location, research opportunities, where recent graduates have gone for fellowship, and call structure were some of the leading factors that I took into account when going through this process.

It is up to you to decide what program will be the best fit for you and how you learn.

My Perspective

As a former chief resident at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor and a former abdominal imaging fellow at the University of California – San Francisco, I have had the opportunity to train at two of the top programs in the country. I am also fortunate in that I have colleagues that have trained at most of the programs on this list. I can say with certainty that all of the programs on this list are excellent and provide superb training. I can also say there are a ton of programs not on this list that are also excellent and provide incredible training. I cover my “Honorable Mentions” at the end of this article.

If you’ve decided to pursue a career in radiology, congratulations on your amazing choice! While these programs are incredibly competitive and may be difficult to match into, there’s no harm in applying to one or more of them and you’re actually doing yourself a disservice by not giving it a shot. I was essentially told I did not have a chance of getting into Michigan by my medical school adviser. I applied anyway, matched, and eventually became a chief resident. Suffice it to say, I’m glad I tried. Don’t close doors that need not be closed 🙂

Many of us fall prey to wanting the name recognition of an elite program, sometimes at the expense of attending the program that is actually the best fit for us. You could go to the best program in the country and be miserable (because of culture, location, etc.), have a less than amazing experience, and potentially come out a weaker radiologist because of it. You won’t get turned down for a job because you didn’t do residency or fellowship at Stanford University or Duke University but you may struggle to find a job if you struggle in residency. Set yourself up for success in residency and you’ll set yourself up for success in getting a job.

Rather than look at a top-ranking list, I believe that there are certain features that you should consider when choosing a radiology residency program. Let’s cover what key elements I think you should be basing your decision on.

Key Elements to Consider When Choosing a Residency Program

Program Culture

When it comes to radiology, we often talk about things in terms of benign versus malignant and this applies to radiology residency programs as well. Medical students should have some familiarity with this concept and will be able to relate to their own medical school experience.

“Malignant” programs have a less friendly feel. The hierarchy feels tangible and you know your role as a trainee (thankfully there are still medical students below you…;)). Faculty at these types of programs have high expectations for their residents and may like to put their residents on the spot, “pimping” residents during clinical rotations and/or conferences to test their knowledge base. If you have thick skin, you’ll likely be fine. If you’re sensitive to feedback, especially in front of your peers, you may struggle with this. However, this can also be a blessing in disguise as it may help you develop thicker skin and prepare you for the real world.

“Benign” programs have attendings with reputations of being friendly. They may seem more down to Earth, go by their first name, and have a more positive approach to teaching. Residents typically feel more comfortable in this setting, which may be more conducive to their learning. However, residents in this setting may find it easier to become complacent and slack on studying.

Clinical Training/Teaching Reputation

This one is pretty straightforward. You want to go to a training program with a reputation for excellent training. One thing that top programs have in common is their ability to spoon-feed you most of the information you need to become an excellent radiologist. They provide a broad medical education from medical imaging diagnosis to clinical manifestations and treatment. They make it easier to succeed.

Programs not known for excellent teaching will require significantly more effort on your part as you will have to make up for any weaknesses the program may have. You have to rely more on self-learning which means you have to sacrifice more personal time.

Program Size

Program size varies among programs and ranges from ~3 to 18. Program size is another factor that can affect your residency experience.

Small programs (say 3-5 residents/year) tend to be closer-knit programs. These residents tend to have closer relationships with their co-residents both within their own year and with their more senior and/or junior residents.

Medium-size programs (say 6-11 residents/year) share the benefits of both. They can still be fairly tight-knit, at least within each radiology class, but also have increased flexibility. This is great for scheduling, call, vacation, finding coverage when someone gets sick, etc.

Large programs (say 12-18 residents/year) make it harder to know everyone in your program, including those in your own residency class. Large programs have significant flexibility and also generally offer exposure to very different practice settings (Veterans Affairs, high-end academic settings, community hospitals, etc.).

Resident Happiness

This is a good predictor of future happiness. If the residents at a program seem overly stressed and unhappy, take that as a red flag. There will be the occasional unhappy resident, but if you notice a trend of unhappy residents, that’s a sign of a larger underlying issue.

Conversely, if everyone in the residency seems very happy and well-rested, that shows they are likely being treated quite well and receiving above-average support.

Location

Location is another incredibly important factor. You’ll be spending at least 4 years in the city your residency program is located and it will likely be a stressful experience. The last thing you need is for you or your family to be miserable after you get home from work.

Do you need to live in a city? Somewhere warm and sunny? Close to family? Are there deal-breakers – snow, lack of diversity, etc.? Cost of living?

You know yourself. Factor this into your decision.

Research Opportunities

If you aren’t interested in research, skip this section.

If you are interested in research, you’ll want to ensure to match at an academic residency program. Academic programs have tons of resources, NIH funding, and more to help you participate in interesting research projects or even start your own research project(s). Whether it be data analysis, artificial intelligence, reconstruction techniques for medical images, or anything related to biomedical imaging, practice management, or quality, large academic institutions will have you covered.

You gain access to data scientists, statisticians, illustrators, and more!

What’s an awesome bonus to doing research? Publishing articles and presenting at conferences. I personally had opportunities to visit Chicago, Boston, Bellevue, Santa Fe, New Orleans, Portland, and more. I even got status on Delta airlines one year! 🙂

Recent Fellowship Track Record

Getting into a top-tier fellowship program is much easier than getting into a top radiology residency program – they have more fellowship slots than residency slots each year.

Make sure they have a good track record of sending residents to excellent fellowship programs (programs on this list and in the Honorable Mentions section).

Call Structure/Experience

Call is incredibly important. This is where you have the steepest learning curve and get prepared for the real world, especially if you take independent call.

You will have to get used to making critical diagnoses that will send patients to the operating room, get transferred to other hospitals, get put on blood thinners, etc. at some point in your career. It’s much better to cross this bridge while you’re still a trainee and be more prepared for practicing on your own.

Moonlighting is another opportunity to get this experience (and get paid!) if offered.

Moonlighting

Are there opportunities to moonlight, whether it be issuing preliminary reads for a local hospital or babysitting a scanner to provide contrast coverage? These are nice opportunities to earn a little extra money and upgrade from eating Chipotle to… just kidding, there’s no upgrade from Chipotle (I am not sponsored by Chipotle, just a huge fan).

Honorable Mentions

Unfortunately, a top 10 list does not do justice to many of the other incredible training programs out there and this section will include some shout-outs to some other excellent training programs that deserve mention. This is not an all-inclusive list and is limited to programs I or my colleagues and friends have experience with. If your program isn’t on here, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t also deserve to be on this list!

University of Wisconsin – Madison
Cleveland Clinic Foundation
Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science – Rochester
Indiana University
Northwestern University
New York University Langone Health
Weill Cornell Medicine of Cornell University
Emory University School of Medicine
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai – Mount Sinai Hospital
University of California – Los Angeles Geffen School of Medicine
University of Virginia
Wake Forest University
Brown Radiology
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Lahey Health and Medical Center
The Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Oregon Health and Science University
University of Iowa
University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine
University of California – San Diego
The Medical University of South Carolina
University of North Carolina
Beaumont Hospital – Royal Oak
Henry Ford Hospital
University of Colorado
Medical College of Wisconsin
Virginia Mason Franciscan Health
and more!

Summary

The 10 best radiology programs consist of many of the elite institutions that you expect to see in a top 10 (Harvard University, University of California – San Francisco, Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University, etc.) and some you may not have expected (e.g., Washington University in St. Louis). These are incredible programs that offer well-rounded training and produce some of the brightest radiologists in the country.

Fortunately, however, you can still get a fantastic radiology education without going to a top 10 radiology program. There are many amazing programs across the country with excellent faculty and a robust training experience.

Regardless of where you match out of medical school, you will get the most out of residency through hard work and dedication. Immerse yourself in each rotation and challenge yourself every day. Take into consideration where you think you will best thrive – you might be surprised to find that the best program for you is actually an unexpected gem.

And don’t worry if you don’t get into a top 10 residency program – there’s always fellowship!

Best of luck to you as you navigate the residency interview process! I hope that this article has been helpful and look forward to welcoming you into the field of radiology shortly!

2021 Radiology Department Research Rankings:

Research productivity score shown on right. Methods described below.

To compare to 2020 rankings click here.

1. Massachusetts General Hospital

2. University of Pennsylvania

3. University of California San Francisco

4. Stanford University

5. Washington University in St. Louis/Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology

6. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

7. Johns Hopkins

9. Brigham and Women’s Hospital

10. New York University

11. Yale University

12. University of Michigan

13, University of Minnesota

14. University of Washington

15. University of California San Diego

16. Weill Medical College of Cornell University

17. Vanderbilt University

18. Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai

19. University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

20. Columbia University

21. MD Anderson Cancer Center

22. Moffitt Cancer Center

23. University of Wisconsin

24. Duke University

25. University of Utah

26. University of Maryland

27. University of North Carolina

28. Indiana University

29. University of California Davis

30. Wake Forest University

31. Northwestern University

32. UT Southwestern Medical Center

33. University of Iowa

34. University of Virginia

35. University of California Los Angeles

36. University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine

37. Thomas Jefferson University/Sidney Kimmel Medical College

38. Emory University

39. University of Massachusetts

40. University of Arizona

41. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

42. Case Western University

43. Ohio State University

44. SUNY Stony Brook

45. Michigan State University

46. University of Colorado

47. University of Alabama

48. Medical College of Wisconsin

49. University of Miami

50. University of California Irvine

51. Medical University of South Carolina

52. Medical College of Georgia

53. UT San Antonio Medical School

54. University of Cincinnati

55. Pennsylvania State University

56. University of Illinois

57. Tufts Medical Center

58. West Virginia University

59. Dartmouth Medical School

60. Baylor College of Medicine

61. University of Kansas Medical Center

62. Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California

63. Wayne State University

64. UT Houston McGovern Medical School

65. University of Tennessee

66. Oregon Health and Science University

Background: Beyond reported annual NIH research funding few objective measures exist to rank the relative strength of a radiology department in terms of research productivity. Many rankings of radiology residency programs found online are largely subjective and typically the opinion of a single person. As an alternative ranking system, The Radiology Review presents an objective and reproducible measure whereby radiology departments may be ranked.

Method: The Radiology Review ranking system relies on two measures. The first measure is the number of publications in the journal Radiology for the prior calendar year (in this case 2020) for which a first or last author of an original scientific study is a faculty member of a United States academic radiology department. In 2019, Radiology had an impact factor of 2.986 that exceeds nearly all other radiology, nuclear medicine, and imaging journals ( https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?category=2741 ). Radiology is therefore the pre-eminent research journal for academic radiologists in the United States, at least in the opinion of The Radiology Review. One could argue that a department publishing in Radiology will also be publishing in other leading imaging-based journals. The number of Radiology publications may therefore stand a reasonable surrogate for overall strength in research publications. Note that only hypothesis-driven research articles in Radiology are considered and the many Editorials published in Radiology (or other types of non-research articles including reviews, etc.) were not counted because there is potential for favoritism in regards to who is invited to write an editorial and only article containing hypothesis-testing and description of results were counted. In 2020, there were a number of special research articles pertaining to COVID-19 and these were included for tabulation as long as an article contained hypothesis-testing and description of results.

The second factor that The Radiology Review ranking system considers is the average NIH funding for each radiology department over a 3 year-span preceding the year of Radiology publications. Because the most recent year of Radiologypublications available is 2020, average NIH funding for each department from 2017-2019 was considered. This data is provided by The Academy for Radiology and Biomedical Imaging Research ( https://www.acadrad.org/nih-datacollection-project/ ). Finally, the average NIH funding from 2016-2018 for each department was multiplied by a conversion factor based on number of Radiology first/last author publications in 2020 to obtain an overall research productivity score. This conversion factor is as follows:

10+ publications = 1.5

8-9 publications = 1.4

6-7 publications = 1.3

4-5 publications = 1.2

2-3 publications = 1.1

1 publication = 1

0 publications = 0.9

The rationale is that if a department had NIH funding but no subsequent publications in Radiology they would have a deduction of 10% on their final research productivity score. For every 1-2 publications a department’s score will get a boost of 10% up to a maximum of 10 publications.

The name of the department is on the left and the calculated research productivity score is on the right. These scores show an estimate of the magnitude of difference between departments according to NIH funding and subsequent Radiologypublications. As you can see MGH absolutely crushed it in 2020.

Receiving NIH funding during the years of interest is required to be on this list so if a specific radiology department is not listed, it means that no NIH funding was reported during 2017-2019.

Real Life: In reality, you certainly shouldn’t panic if your department isn’t at the top of the list, or doesn’t make the list at all. Residents can have an absolutely great residency with exceptional educational and research experiences at any U.S. radiology program. The same is true for faculty in terms of the ability to find outstanding research opportunities wherever one is—opportunity abounds for research in medical imaging. Medical students—use this list with caution when making your rank lists. You could end up at a highly ranked research program and be miserable for 4 years if that program isn’t a good fit for you. I didn’t go to a program at the top of the list for residency and I generally found my residency experience to be fantastic. Do your homework and consider the overall fit of each program with your life goals.

Is this ranking perfect? Definitely not.

Is this ranking the best that currently exists? Possibly. This is an objective measure that is not based on opinion but on average multi-year NIH funding and number of Radiology publications for the most-recent completed year. Read the methods above and you will see that any personal opinion I may have about a program had no bearing on how they are ranked.