I agree with everything Shark2000 said above.
Answers to your questions below:
1. What was your salary/vacation the first year?
We generally refrain from posting salaries online. While everything is highly variable from one practice to another, I can generalize as follows: For private practice, they were overall still very high this year 🙂 and what you would expect for radiologists but you have a very very busy workday. If you are on a partnership track, it might start off slightly below avg, increase by about 25k each yr for the first 3 yrs, but then increase to about 1.7x of the starting salary on yr 4. Vacation on avg was around 7-8 wks, some as high as 12 wks for IR, but as low as 4-5 wks for NYC. For academics, I would say the salary is decent though lower than private practice and the volume is still busy but not as busy as a private practice. If you went into academics, you would be making the avg salary of a doctor not going into radiology. Vacation was around 4-5 wks.
2. How much did it increase and over how many years?
See above.
3. Are all the jobs out the only ones that exist or are there opportunities through contacts to get a job, ie in academics? I notice there are almost no academic jobs out from good institutions. The only one is from mayo with a 100k starting salary???
Most (>75%) found jobs on online radiology bulletin boards like ACR or RSNA. Others found their jobs through word of mouth or cold calling. Most (>75%) went into private practice, around 20% into community hospitals, and maybe around <5% into hardcore academics. I saw academic jobs posted for almost every prestigious academic center, including MGH, BWH, Hopkins, Penn, Columbia, NYU, Sinai, WashU, Case Western, and Stanford. Some were ER (predominantly evening/overnight) though there were also a good number of jobs for normal daytime hours. Most people I knew did not apply to the evening jobs because they did not like the hours, and most did not apply to the daytime jobs because of the research expectation and lower salary. The starting salary is definitely not 100k lol. Many academic places have a low base salary of around 100-150k but then more than double that with annual bonus money to bring the total salary to something that would expect an academic radiologist to make.
4. Which fellowship is most lucrative?
IR is the most lucrative while mammo has the potential for the nicest lifestyle but it takes a certain type of person/personality to go into either (i.e., not me!). Most private practice positions tended be generalist positions, where you read a little bit of every modality and do basic procedures (such as breast biopsies). There were some, but very few, private practice jobs that only let you read studies in only your fellowship area of expertise and these tended to be in large mega practices (e.g., in Florida or Texas).
