Health Care

If you're a fan of TV shows like "ER," "Scrubs," and "Grey's Anatomy" and live vicariously through on-screen doctors, nurses, and hospital techs, you should consider real-life health care careers. Take your science-field aspirations off the couch, out of primetime, and into the classroom at health care schools. You'll be rewarded both financially and emotionally. In fact, some hospitals offer experienced nurses up to $14,000 as signing bonuses alone apart from their salaries. And, statistics show that 400,000 nursing positions will be available come 2012. If nursing's not your forte, there are plenty of health care programs that focus on lab tech training and lead to lucrative health care careers. For instance, radiological technologists and technicians earned an average salary of $43,410 in 2003. X-ray and nuclear medicine programs get you ready to earn even higher pay than that.