Optho is part of the "Early Match", and has traditionally been a very competitive specialty to get into. Generally, the match rate (US MD seniors) has been around 83%, with board scores around 225.
During the mid-90's 'primary care' rush, it took a dip in popularity and for a while was fairly easy to get into. Because of this, some books (Iserson's, First Aid for the Match) still have it listed as a specialty of only moderate difficulty to enter. However, since 1999, it has been back into the double-digit unmatch rates (15-20%), and board scores were on the rise.
The early match website <a href="http://www.sfmatch.org," target="_blank">www.sfmatch.org,</a> used to have a *great* statistics page for all of its programs, but in the past 6 months or so they have removed it. Apparently this sort of "specialty ranking" is being discouraged, as the NRMP hasn't released any of their data either for the past 2 years. I guess they would prefer to see more of us waste our time on specialties we can never get into....