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voxveritatisetlucis said:
Not in terms of applicants interviewing but schools sending them out. The school specific threads seem to be much less active than both a month ago and at this time in previous cycles. I hadn’t heard anything until yesterday for four weeks after getting some semi-early interviews but I wasn’t able to schedule until early December. Are most schools starting to wind down until slots open after cancellations?
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Nope. You cannot go by your experience alone. Just look in the school specific threads. IIs are still going out, every day. Didn't you say you just received one yesterday? 🙂

This cycle is just like all the others. Peak II season is September-October. It will start to wind down after that, but continue right into the winter and next spring, just like it does every year.

The stars with high review priority have done very well so far, and things are undoubtedly beginning to wind down for them, since they have already been reviewed at most of their schools. But there are literally thousands of applicants who have not yet been reviewed at many schools, and tens of thousands of IIs that have not yet been issued.

October will be as strong as September, if not more so. Things will start to wind down after that, which is why Thanksgiving is a good time to take stock.
 
KnightDoc said:
Nope. You cannot go by your experience alone. Just look in the school specific threads. IIs are still going out, every day. Didn't you say you just received one yesterday? 🙂

This cycle is just like all the others. Peak II season is September-October. It will start to wind down after that, but continue right into the winter and next spring, just like it does every year.

The stars with high review priority have done very well so far, and things are undoubtedly beginning to wind down for them, since they have already been reviewed at most of their schools. But there are literally tens of thousands of applicants who have not yet been reviewed at many schools, and hundreds of thousands of IIs that have not yet been issued.

October will be as strong as September, if not more so. Things will start to wind down after that, which is why Thanksgiving is a good time to take stock.
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He said: “The school specific threads seem to be much less active than both a month ago and at this time in previous cycles.”

He’s not wrong. A lot of us have noticed the same thing. And activity is inevitably different now that applicants will hold their IIs and attend most (Zoom) to compare offers versus dropping those IIs after some October acceptances. The time/cost constraints have been reduced substantially. So the increase in typical late October II activity isn’t necessarily what we’ll see this year.
 
voxveritatisetlucis said:
Obviously I wasn’t expecting to get as many, but almost every school that has online trackers has sent out more than half of their interviews.

Vanderbilt = 290/550
Wayne state = 750/1100
Phoenix = 220/380

None of these schools are known for having historically early cycles like GW, georgetown etc.
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Could you link these trackers?
 
KnightDoc said:
Nope. You cannot go by your experience alone. Just look in the school specific threads. IIs are still going out, every day. Didn't you say you just received one yesterday? 🙂

This cycle is just like all the others. Peak II season is September-October. It will start to wind down after that, but continue right into the winter and next spring, just like it does every year.

The stars with high review priority have done very well so far, and things are undoubtedly beginning to wind down for them, since they have already been reviewed at most of their schools. But there are literally thousands of applicants who have not yet been reviewed at many schools, and tens of thousands of IIs that have not yet been issued.

October will be as strong as September, if not more so. Things will start to wind down after that, which is why Thanksgiving is a good time to take stock.
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Might not even wind down for high priority review applicants as a lot of schools do silent holds and then re-review later once more applications are in and there don't seem to be stronger applicants later in the cycle. I believe that happened to me at 2 schools last cycle, perhaps even all 3.

Actually even this cycle, Dartmouth sent a wave of Rs yesterday. I was a very early high stat applicant with substantial research, clinical, and service. It's unlikely I haven't been reviewed yet, but I still did not receive an R.
 
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UsernameChecksOut said:
He said: “The school specific threads seem to be much less active than both a month ago and at this time in previous cycles.”

He’s not wrong. A lot of us have noticed the same thing. And activity is inevitably different now that applicants will hold their IIs and attend most (Zoom) to compare offers versus dropping those IIs after some October acceptances. The time/cost constraints have been reduced substantially. So the increase in typical late October II activity isn’t necessarily what we’ll see this year.
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I guess we'll see. I haven't noticed a drop off in school specific activity, let alone "much less" activity. OP himself just had a burst activity after a month long lull! 🙂 Given the delays last cycle, I guess we could see a drop off going forward, since we probably had more activity in August and early September this year as compared to last, but I haven't seen it yet.

And yeah, there will be a lot less IIs cancellations now that everything is virtual, but whether or not this is material to overall II activity remains to be seen. And, as you noted, it wouldn't be noticed until late October at the earliest.
 
Didn't you literally say in your other post that you "already decided to reapply one more time?" If so why do you keep making so many new posts about neurotic statistics that are completely irrelevant and just serve to stress others out?
 
msummer said:
Might not even wind down for high priority review applicants as a lot of schools do silent holds and then re-review later once more applications are in and there don't seem to be stronger applicants later in the cycle. I believe that happened to me at 2 schools last cycle, perhaps even all 3.

Actually even this cycle, Dartmouth sent a wave of Rs yesterday. I was a very early high stat applicant with substantial research, clinical, and service. It's unlikely I haven't been reviewed yet, but I still did not receive an R.
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If you didn't receive an II, R or H, you honestly have no idea whether or not you have been reviewed, regardless of what you think is "unlikely" from the outside looking in.

As for high priority review candidates, it certainly will be winding down. That does not necessarily mean dying, but the person with 24 secondaries and 12 IIs will absolutely not be receiving another 12 IIs, so, yes, things will be winding down for him, whether he receives 0, 1 or 5 more IIs. 🙂
 
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KnightDoc said:
If you didn't receive an A, R or H, you honestly have no idea whether or not you have been reviewed, regardless of what you think is "unlikely" from the outside looking in.

As for high priority review candidates, it certainly will be winding down. That does not necessarily mean dying, but the person with 24 secondaries and 12 IIs will absolutely not be receiving another 12 IIs, so, yes, things will be winding down for him, whether he receives 0, 1 or 5 more IIs. 🙂
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You're generally right, but I'm surrounded by a pretty substantial sample size of students from both my university and others, with stats near me and submitted around the same time as me (not to mention, I know a lot about their applications and we all judged each others' relative strengths). So far, my guesses about my own application have largely been correct (especially with the benefit of hindsight from last cycle), and I'm hoping they'll continue to be so.
 
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msummer said:
You're right, but I'm surrounded by a pretty substantial sample size of students from both my university and others, with stats near me and submitted around the same time as me (not to mention, I know a lot about their application and we all judged each others' relative strengths). So far, my guesses about my own application have largely been correct (especially with the benefit of hindsight from last cycle), and I'm hoping they'll continue to be so.
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I get it, and I do exactly the same thing! I'm just pointing out that we really just have no way to know. Schools don't act consistently among themselves, and they don't treat us consistently.

By the way, this really is much ado about nothing. There is no functional difference between a silent hold and not yet being reviewed. Either way, you received no benefit from being complete early, are not rejected, and don't have an II! 🙂 The entire rationale behind high stat candidates submitting early is to get the early review and snag an II while there are still plenty to go around. Whether you are on a silent hold or just, for whatever reason, didn't receive an early review, you are in exactly the same position, waiting around to see what happens.
 
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voxveritatisetlucis said:
Just curious as to how it will affect final decisions. As you probably know, there are multiple Adcoms on here who can give useful info about how things have changed.

In the past, applicants with 4 or 5 by the end of September could count on a few more trickling in. If that is now longer the case, I would imagine that these applicants begin preparing for next cycle a lot earlier. I’ve seen people with 4 or 5 not get in (though rare). I have not seen the same with 7 or 8.
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literally everything on this page is he said she said. Even for AOs it is highly dependent on the school. No school runs the same and schools can vary widely on II policies and general student targets. You can't try to generalize everything based on one opinion or how one school works.

also as great as it is to prep reapply early, seeing post like "im going to for sure reapply next year despite having 4 IIs right now" and a bunch of other beyond-neurotic posts on school specific threads is just giving me a migraine especially considering how the vast majority of people have nothing (assuming I'm speaking for the masses here, but if anyone disagrees feel free)
 
KnightDoc said:
I get it, and I do exactly the same thing! I'm just pointing out that we really just have no way to know. Schools don't act consistently among themselves, and they don't treat us consistently. By the way, this really is much ado about nothing. There is no functional difference between a silent hold and not yet being reviewed. Either way, you received no benefit from being complete early, are not rejected, and don't have an II! 🙂
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Good point for sure! For example, they might have assigned batches to different adcoms, and I might be in a separate batch than my friends and an adcom might not have gotten to my file yet. So it's definitely possible, but I was just looking at most likely options here, given that I was complete early and have similar stats and university to friends that received rejections.
 
msummer said:
Good point for sure! For example, they might have assigned batches to different adcoms, and I might be in a separate batch than my friends and an adcom might not have gotten to my file yet. So it's definitely possible, but I was just looking at most likely options here, given that I was complete early and have similar stats and university to friends that received rejections.
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Well, you are definitely in a better position than them, at least for the time being! 🙂
 
joe32 said:
literally everything on this page is he said she said. Even for AOs it is highly dependent on the school. No school runs the same and schools can vary widely on II policies and general student targets. You can't try to generalize everything based on one opinion or how one school works.

also as great as it is to prep reapply early, seeing post like "im going to for sure reapply next year despite having 4 IIs right now" and a bunch of other beyond-neurotic posts on school specific threads is just giving me a migraine especially considering how the vast majority of people have nothing (assuming I'm speaking for the masses here, but if anyone disagrees feel free)
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I used to side mainly with vox, but I'm leaning more towards you at this point. Vox's posts are usually about things I'm thinking about and would love to have answers to. They always made me stressed, but I figured the stress was worth it if it taught me something about the process.

However, I've realized at this point that these threads are 90% he said she said, 9% information, and 1% useful information. Even the adcoms' information is sometimes very school-specific. I have 6 IIs, and seeing this post itself made me nervous enough to run circles around other SDN threads and and r/premed since this morning to assess its veracity.

That said, @Vox, this is an open forum thread and do whatever helps you prep the best. However, I really don't think any of these threads are useful to help you project reapplication status or even your own standing.

What has been by far the most useful to me is using my peers as proxies (both from last cycle and this one), whom I'm very familiar with application wise and submit near the same time I did.
 
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Just thought it might be helpful to gauge how fast or slow interviews are being extended are being extended. compared to normal. But it appears that speculation on what proportion of interviews remain at each school is stressful/unhelpful to most. Will delete.
 
Also, since I mentioned on this thread how important and useful having similarly performing friends at your university are, I just wanted to share a detail.
I mentioned a month ago how I predicted I would receive an interview at two schools in late September or October, based on my friends' performances in both this cycle and last. I just received that interview. Hoping the other one comes soon!
 
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