How many programs to apply to (peds)?

[swtiepie711]

---

Members do not see this ad.

How do applicants pick how many programs to apply to? I know it must vary and depend on each applicants "competitiveness" - but are there general guidelines? 20? 30?
I don't want to limit myself early by applying to too few, but I'm aiming to stay in my home state which has 10+ programs so I'm trying to figure out how to decide on how many (and which) out of state programs to apply to. Thanks for any thoughts (peds or otherwise)

 

[babel]

I'm applying to peds, myself. An advisor told me that people from my school are usually advised to apply to ~15 programs, but given that I was set on heading to the west coast that I should apply to about 20. I think 20 is a good number if you are a solid candidate - average+ step1 score, good grades etc. If you are a superstar I suppose you could apply to 10-15. I am very risk-averse, however, and given the data out there I am aiming to go on ~10 interviews - so 20 apps feels like a safe number to me.

Contrast this with classmates applying to ENT, Derm etc who are applying to 40-50+ programs. Specialty and location have a lot to do with it.