Honestly I’m just an applicant, but I’ve tried to read through a lot of threads here on SDN that adcoms have chimed into. I’ve seen a few reasons, one being that there is an element and uncertainty in the process in that schools are unsure how many applicants will CTE to their school so they keep a healthy waitlist in case they need to pull more than they imagined. Also, there seems to be some stratification in that apps that meet criteria that a school will be looking for will be shuffled up on the priority list to review and they will work through the list in that order. If applicants they accept withdraw, they push others up that meet similar metrics so that being reviewed isn’t exactly linear from date of complete. This is just speculation and some points I’ve seen shared among threads. The process itself isn’t transparent and often seems unfair but I’m sure there are many more cogs working behind the scenes than we know. Unfortunately for us we are just in the dark