This post showed up in the residency forum section, and given my lack of any experience related to ortho (I'm doing derm), I have a few general thoughts.
I'm assuming you posted this because you are a pre-med who is unsure if med school is worth the cost, and understandably, you're trying to gather as much info as possible. First, although people put derm on a pedestal, ortho and ENT are often just as competitive. The point of this is that you should not enter med school with the mindset of ortho-or-bust. I know a lot of guys in my class (and in previous years) who wanted ortho but didn't get it. I always cringe when I meet people who tell me that they only want to do derm because it's a difficult road, and even if you cross all your t's, there is no guarantee. Medical school is a huge financial and time commitment, and you need to make sure you would be happy doing something other than ortho . . . which is difficult to determine because you likely have limited exposure to medicine, and even if you do, it was probably via shadowing, which is often not a realistic representation of what your day-to-day activities are. Deciding to go to med school is not easy, and my best advice to you is look for older threads made by people who were on the fence about med school. Good luck!
