What are the odds?

Good question, and I don't know myself. However, some things that may help you estimate the answer. I think the NRMP results said that about 14% of people who applied for ortho didn't match. This is a falsely low number, since probably many people who applied for ortho also ranked general surgery (prelim or categorical) or other specialties. The better question would be who didn't match in ortho who ranked an ortho program No. 1 in their list. Following this website for a while I don't think anyone has the numbers but some people put their guesses. I would guess the number is somewhere between 20-40%, but I really don't know.

Ditto. I've heard 40% thrown around a few times. If true, that's not very favorable when you think about it.

The numbers that I saw from last year was about 1100 people ranked at least one ortho program with about 550 of them matching. That comes to an unmatched rate of like 45%. Only like 650 ranked only ortho which comes out to around a 15% unmatched rate.

An article in the American Journal of Surgery 184 (2002) 1-5 discusses match rates in surgical subspecialties. They list data from 1996 -2000

"Data was obtained from matching programs specifically for US senior medical students who ranked categorical/advanced positions only in a single surgical specialty"

Match Numbers:

1996: 393/469 84%
1997: 438/508 86%
1998: 444/560 79%
1999: 452/577 78%
2000: 445/519 86%

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the input Orthodoc, I think it's really difficult to determine how many people are REALLY applying to ortho. My school traditionally has never matched >6 in a given year (usually with approximately 8 applicants). However, I was told that our class this year has at least 12 people applying (not including a few who are reapplying after doing the dreaded g-surg prelim year). I think many of these people though are applying to several specialities. It will be interesting to see how things pan out.