I applied for ortho and general surgery (as a backup after not matching ortho last year). I only applied to ten g surg programs so there wasn't a lot of overlap. My home program and one in Florida were the only places I applied to both specialties. At Florida neither had any idea (except that some residents saw me on my ortho tour the day after gsurg interviews). I had told my home program g surg PD about applying for ortho the year before, and I think I told him I was dual applying (don't remember). I pretty much had to come clean in my g surg interviews because I had done only ortho sub I's, and my research year was in ortho (and the letter my supervisor wrote was filled with how great an orthopedic surgeon I would make-oops). None of the ortho programs I intervied with knew. It didn't seem to affect anything since I matched at my first choice g surg program (would have been better if it was ortho, but I'm really glad not to have been unmatched again).