Some of your questions are best answered by folks at your school who know you. If you haven't already, meet with your school's surgery program director. Bring your transcript, step 1 score and a prelim list of programs that you might apply to and ask for that individual's input on how competitive you are.
Where you apply depends on a lot of variables...your credentials are one. Do you want to target or avoid any specific geographic area? What are your career goals (return to your hometown as the local general surgeon, do you want fellowship options or do you think you want to work in academia? Do you aspire to be chair of a surgery department someday?) All of these things will affect where and what type of program you apply to. Also you'll need to decide how many applications to make based on your credentials and the competitiveness of the programs you apply to
Over the next several months, you should do the following
Get all your application materials together. Be ready to fill out the online ERAS as soon as you can.
Write your personal statement
Start lining up people to write your letters of recommendation
Meet with your surgery department chair to get your chairmans letter.
Have your dean's letter meeting early in the process.
Make a list of possible programs, run it by as many people as you can. If any of your residents went to any of those schools, or interviewed at those places, those folks will be good resources for you. Also ask any faculty with whom you have good relationships.
Try to apply to a few programs which would be a bit of a stretch for you, mostly programs that you are solid for and a few that should be slam-dunks for interviews. Again, those people at your school who are familiar with your work and personality would be best suited to advise you about this.
When you are allowed to send our the ERAS (probably Sept 1 or thereabouts) send it within 2 weeks of that first day. The eariler you apply, the eariler you will get interview invitations and the better choices you will have for dates.
Make a master calander to keep track of you interview dates on. Also, make sure that, after you've sent your ERAS, you can access your email daily no matter where you are. The vast majority of interview invites will come by email (only 1/20 invites I got came by snail mail. I thought it was going to be a rejection letter!). Typically they list the dates available. Reply to the email with your choices within 48 hours to maximize your chance of getting the dates you want. At some point, you'll probably have a coflict, so you'll have to have some sense early on of which program are the ones you want interviews at the most. (DO NOT stress out, however, if interview offers are slow in coming at first. I found I had far fewer offers than most of my surgical wannabe counterparts for a long time...eg in late octber I had 2 and everyone else I talked to had 5-8 offers. However, I wound up matching at a far better known program than most of my counterparts, and generally applied to much more competitive programs.)
Apply early for a residency relocation loan if you need one.
Do you see a theme here? If you are a procrastinator by nature, now is the time to repent!
Above all, rank enough programs!!! You've probably heard that surgery had a surge of popularity this year. We had 20 in my class go into general surgery (highest number in 10-12 years) We were all shocked when 5 of those people didn't match. They aren't weak candidates. In retrospect, the ones I talked to didn't rank enough programs (ranking only 5 is very risky). They all easily got prelim positions at programs they had ranked highly (the programs had also ranked them fairly highly as well, it was just the way the numbers game was played this year it wasn't high enough). Still, scrambling is not what you want to be doing next march.
Good luck...it's a long, sometimes fun and sometimes stressful process. Have as much fun and as little stress as possible.
