What Step 2 score do you need for your specialty?
Every other page answers this with the average score of people who matched. That is the wrong number. Here is the probability of matching at your score.
Twenty more points is the same amount of work in every specialty. What it buys differs by a factor of forty.
The average is the wrong number
"The average matched dermatologist scored 253" is the most repeated sentence in Step 2 advice, and it is close to useless. It describes people who already matched. It says nothing about what happens to you at 244.
The NRMP publishes the number that actually answers the question: among US MD seniors who applied to a specialty, what fraction matched, broken out by Step 2 band. That is below, for all 22 specialties, with the sample size of every cell so you can see which numbers to trust.
| Step 2 band | Matched | Applicants | How solid |
|---|---|---|---|
| 210s | 21% | 34 | usable |
| 220s | 33% | 93 | usable |
| 230s | 56% | 243 | solid |
| 240s | 66% | 605 | solid |
| 250 and up | 81% | 2,247 | solid |
Matched average for Orthopaedic Surgery: 253. NRMP Charting Outcomes in the Match, U.S. MD Seniors, pooled 2020-2024 (via Rezumab NRMP grid).
Whether the next 20 points are worth anything depends entirely on your specialty
This is the finding worth carrying away, and it is invisible if you only ever read average scores. Moving from the 230s to 250 and up is the same amount of work in every specialty. It buys wildly different things.
| Specialty | 230s | 250+ | Points bought |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plastic Surgery | 37% | 80% | +43 |
| Otolaryngology | 51% | 81% | +30 |
| Orthopaedic Surgery | 56% | 81% | +25 |
| General Surgery | 69% | 94% | +25 |
| Dermatology | 59% | 81% | +22 |
| Neurological Surgery | 63% | 84% | +21 |
| Diagnostic Radiology | 75% | 94% | +19 |
| Vascular Surgery | 79% | 95% | +16 |
| Internal Medicine/Pediatrics | 80% | 95% | +15 |
| Anesthesiology | 81% | 96% | +15 |
| Obstetrics and Gynecology | 81% | 92% | +11 |
| Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation | 85% | 94% | +9 |
| Psychiatry | 88% | 96% | +8 |
| Interventional Radiology | 79% | 85% | +6 |
| Pathology | 95% | 99% | +4 |
| Emergency Medicine | 94% | 97% | +3 |
| Child Neurology | 96% | 99% | +3 |
| Neurology | 96% | 99% | +3 |
| Internal Medicine | 98% | 99% | +1 |
| Pediatrics | 99% | 100% | +1 |
| Family Medicine | 99% | 100% | +1 |
| Radiation Oncology | 100% | 99% | -1 |
If you are going into primary care with a 235, the honest advice is that more Step 2 points are close to the least valuable thing you can buy with your remaining weeks. If you are going into a surgical subspecialty at the same score, they may be the most valuable thing available to you.
What this data cannot tell you
Four limits, stated plainly, because a page that hides them is not worth trusting with a decision this size.
- It is US MD seniors only. DO students and international graduates face different distributions and often different score expectations. These numbers do not transfer.
- It is a correlation, not a lever. Students who score 250 also tend to have stronger research, letters, and clerkship grades. The percentage attached to a band is what happened to people in that band, not what a score change would do for you. Nobody has run the experiment where the same applicant applies twice with different scores.
- Thin cells wobble. Radiation Oncology reads 100% in the 220s and 99% at 250 and up, which is not a real inversion, it is twenty people. Every cell under 30 applicants is marked. Do not build a plan on a marked cell.
- The top band is open-ended. 250+ has no ceiling, so a specialty whose applicants cluster at 265 looks the same here as one clustering at 252.
pMatchPct = P(match | Step 2 band) for US MD seniors in that specialty. matchedAvg = applicant-weighted mean Step 2 of matched seniors (250+ band midpoint=257, so top specialties are slightly conservative). Passing score 218. Pages still quoting 214 as the passing score are using the pre-2022 number; it has been 218 since.