I've been told by integrated/combined residents who were very strong applicants that they received many rejections (no interview) from general surgery residency programs and were straight up told that it was because of their plastic surgery interest.
While I'm sure this happens, I have some trouble with the "many" rejections. Having been on both sides of this, plastic surgery applicants are usually much stronger on paper than the average general surgery applicants. Before all you g-surg minded people get upset (and I am boarded in general surgery), it's really a matter of doing what you need to do get a residency spot. Those who are dead set on plastics really try to kill themselves with getting great board scores, research projects, away rotations, AIs, etc., because it is that much tougher to get into a plastics residency. I had mentioned previously on the last round of interviews, we had an applicant with a 280. I never saw that when we interviewed general surgery residents.
Now again, I am NOT saying people who want to do general are not as good. I know there are great GS applicants who could compete for plastics spots but have other interests like CT, vascular and surg onc (or just really want to be a general surgeon). And I do think GS has gotten a little more competitive with the work hour changes (and I have a whole other problem with that). But let's face it, if you really want plastics you generally need to be better than the GS applicant.
Every year we get letters of recommendation from general surgery chairs who all say pretty much the same thing. They want their person to stay in general surgery but support their decision for plastics and recommend them without hesitation. Any why? Because they are great applicants and the program would be stupid to not want to keep them.
Where some of us get into trouble (and I experienced this as my numbers out of med school were not competitive enough for plastics), is that you are on similar ground with a GS applicant (boards scores really good but not great, really good letters but not great) and then I think you might see the rejections. Or if you're great and want to use Duke or Mass Gen as a back up you might not get an interview. And while I know there is discrimination out there for those with plastics interest applying to general surgery, a great applicant is still a great applicant.
Lastly, just to reiterate, my purpose for responding is not to make anyone mad or insulted. It's just that people will work as hard as they need to in order to achieve their goals. If you can reach a goal without working as hard (i.e. decide that killing yourself in medical school and then doing 6 years of residency with 3 years in something you don't think you'd enjoy is too much), then you'll do other things with your time than spend it studying at the library. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. The medical field needs pediatricians, IM, and pathology (not to be picking out anyone in particular) as well as the insanely driven obsessive compulsive surgeons.
