One of the fun things about being done with residency is that you start getting all these mailings from headhunters recruiting you. I get at least 3 or 4 of these a week. Most of the points already made are true: there is a definite geographic difference in salaries (South=highest, northeast and west coast=lowest) This mostly relates to managed care penetration (or lack thereof), number of neurologists already in the area, and difficulty in recruiting people to certain locations (I don't care how much they pay me, I ain't going to Louisiana. I saw an article once that said 75% of all doctors wanted to practice in one of just 7 states -- that's pretty limiting. If I recall right, the states were Florida, Texas, New York, Colorado, Washington, California, and North Carolina).
In those ads which have actually listed a salary, the range has been from 150K to 300K. Obviously, there are LOTS of variables at work here, since compensation can be be a very complicated matter (partnership vs straight salary vs productivity bonuses, etc). You also have to keep other factors mind (insurance, CME $, retirement, malpractice, call schedule, etc). Most of these jobs are for private practice or hospital-based practices, you don't get many from academic centers, so I can't comment on that setting.
The bottom line is that not many neurologists are sending their kids to bed hungry at night. A good point to keep the salary issues in perspective is that a salary of 120 K puts you in the TOP 5% OF ALL WAGE EARNERS in the country. That's pretty darn good if you think about it.
As to the question of "what's a good residency," my take on that has always been "the best residency is the one that seems right for you." There are lots of variables here: geographic preference, research opportunities, program size, "feel" for the place, etc. The key things that you need to keep in mind are:
1. most physicians DON"T do residencies at Harvard/Penn/Columbia etc, and yet are still quite well trained and competent. If a "big name" matters to you, well, that's fine, but my feeling has always been that unless you plan a high-powered academic research career, it's not really all that important to go to a place like that. I've never had a patient ask me where I went to med school or did my residency.
2. Your impression of the program during the interview is probably what's most important. I interviewed at some of the "top" programs and walked out thinking "no way I'd ever come here," and left some lesser known programs thinking "hey, this place is great." Remember, you're going to be spending most of your life for 4 years there, so your gut feeling about a place is pretty important.
3. The bottom line for #1 and #2 is: apply to a wide range of places. Talk to your med school neurology faculty about not only "what are the 'best' residencies" (because, from a purely statistical viewpoint, you won't be going to one of them), but "what do you think are strong but maybe lesser known residencies." Of course, they may be biased toward their own program, but most will give you pretty honest answers.
