Should I Pursue a Medical Physics Masters or PhD in the U.S.?

[Ranjithakh]

Hello
I have a masters degree in medical physics from India. I recently moved to the United States and I'm planning to apply to medical physics graduate schools in the U.S. I am confused if i should apply for masters program or Phd? I'm interested in clinical medical physics. Are there good chances for m.s. graduates to get into residency?
I have cgpa of 3.62 in my undergrad and 3.2 in masters. I have also done a one-year internship in a radiation oncology department.
I'm yet to write GRE and TOEFL and looking forward to apply to UT Houston ,UT San Antonio , LSU, UCLA, Duke, University of Indiana and University of Chicago
Awaiting your valuable guidance and suggestions
Thank you very much

 

[Choppy]

You can look at this CAMPEP report from some general statistics. It seems about half of the MSc graduates are going on into either a residency or a junior physicist position, and another ~13-25% stay in for the PhD. PhD graduates tend to be a little more successful in moving on into residencies. Informally I think this is often because PhD graduates can either help to push academic projects forward, or simply because they've been in the game longer they tend to be able to push clinical projects forward faster too.

Having already done a medical physics degree in India and an internship already, you'd very likely be on the more competitive side of the MSc pool if you went that route.

 

[Ranjithakh]

Thank you very much . Really helped to give me an insight.