30-35 is plenty- just be realistic and smart about where you apply. Applying to 50-60+ programs is the shotgun strategy for someone with subpar numbers who may not have a good chance of matching otherwise.

My med school classmates who were doing ortho and I used 30 as the magic number. We all interviewed 10-15 places and all matched to our #1 or 2- and your application sounds better than ours.

Trust your application, you'll be fine. The offers will start to roll in come Nov. 1st.

Thanks for the reassurance.

Hey everybody. I'm trying to decide how many programs to apply to. I've applied to somewhere in the 30-35 range, but I keep hearing from people who have applied to 50+ so I'm wondering if I should add more.

I'm at a good NE private school. All honors in the first 2 years, except for two high passes. In third year I got Honors in Surgery, Ortho, Medicine, and Family Medicine. I got an Excellent in Psychiatry. I only got a Good in Pediatrics and OB/Gyn.

Honors in my two senior ortho clerkships.

USMLE Step 1]

"Hey come look at my stats."

Hey everybody. I'm trying to decide how many programs to apply to. I've applied to somewhere in the 30-35 range, but I keep hearing from people who have applied to 50+ so I'm wondering if I should add more.

I'm at a good NE private school. All honors in the first 2 years, except for two high passes. In third year I got Honors in Surgery, Ortho, Medicine, and Family Medicine. I got an Excellent in Psychiatry. I only got a Good in Pediatrics and OB/Gyn.

Honors in my two senior ortho clerkships.

USMLE Step 1]

"Hey come look at my stats."

I had an honest question, and it's not possible to get an accurate answer without laying out what I have. Thanks for your constructive reply.

As anyone who reads this site often knows, the site is rampant with similar posts. Spiff21, questions like this are most appropriately answered by your orthopaedics advisor and school dean. Are you really going to base the number of programs to which you apply on anonymous responses on this forum? I don't mean to only single you out. Perhaps you are not a long time reader of this forum and have not seen the many many posts asking people with clearly very good records to stop posting their information and asking questions about their chances. Since these are people who are clearly very keyed into the system and therefore have deans, advisors and other people in ortho to go to, there is really no explanation other than needing a little ego boost. I would just ask that people using the forum have a little more respect for all the users, especially during the current application time, when everyone is going to be a little more on edge. Thank you.

Hey everybody. I'm trying to decide how many programs to apply to. I've applied to somewhere in the 30-35 range, but I keep hearing from people who have applied to 50+ so I'm wondering if I should add more.

I'm at a good NE private school. All honors in the first 2 years, except for two high passes. In third year I got Honors in Surgery, Ortho, Medicine, and Family Medicine. I got an Excellent in Psychiatry. I only got a Good in Pediatrics and OB/Gyn.

Honors in my two senior ortho clerkships.

USMLE Step 1]

"Hey come look at my stats."

I had an honest question, and it's not possible to get an accurate answer without laying out what I have. Thanks for your constructive reply.

OK, I'll try "constructive."

I'm pretty sure you know what you're going to do, being it October and ERAS opened amonth ago. Also, considering you have all honors in yrs one or two, most honors in year 3, a step one score in the top 5th percentile, and multiple publications, the answer to your question should seem fairly obvious.

Disregarding that, I would still apply in the 50-60 range. The NE is pretty competitive, and it's better to match outside your region than not at all.

Now is not the time to work w/in abudget.