Is it inappropriate to contact a program and ask about their general requirements, including (and more specifically) average Step 1 scores of recent sucessful applicants? Thanks.
Those are OK questions to ask. You may not get satisfying answers from all the programs, but they may give you ranges or suggestions. They will give you lots of info about the program itself, such as call schedule, physical plants, patient demographics, rotations, etc. you can also get info about the community itself as well.
I never asked the question directly to the program, but I did:
1) Check the FREIDA web site.
2) Watch the interview thread at SDN to get an idea of which places invite people to interview liberally and which interview very few people.
I suppose you could also email the residency coordinator (i.e. the administrator who sends out all the emails) to ask whether there's a USMLE score cut-off for interviews.
