is this just ortho or are we talking about other surgical specialities like opthalmology, urology, ent, plastics, neurosurgery. it seems like orthopaedics is the most competitive given that nearly all spots fill for some 600 programs

i find this field attractive as it lets me get down, dirty, and occasionally rough, compliments active lifestyle, requires coordination, they deal with muscle bone and joints, this is actually a reputable field in medicine where you care for people directly [not like mechanics] and you actually make enough to live well, and the bs that you don't need to use a brain or need to deal with anyone's emotion [like radiology] i now realize is not true - so what the heck else could i personally ask for. but this kind of career is not glamourous in any way, so what is driving people to it while the salary is great, there is no the potential of doing short procedures and banking on many per day like retinal surgery or plastics. being very lucrative in ortho means doing things like inventing some implant that becomes standard use or doing some other out of the ordinary thing.

so are there many other med students thinking like this and that's what makes the residency tough to get in, or is there some other desirable aspect that i'm missing here