I appreciate your quick repsonse! Thank you, that actually makes a lot of sense!
The problem is that applicants are accepting more interviews because they don’t have to travel or miss as much work/school. But each applicant can only end up at one school. Usually there are waves of interview cancellations after October 15. I would doubt that this is the case this year.
I think I was referring more to interview invitations, rather than interview attendance. I think what you are referring to will impact interview attendance (not necessarily how many invitations they hand out). But you bring up a very interesting point!
We are likely to do fewer now that we have outcomes for last year's (aberrant) cycle.
Couldn't that discrepancy be due to increased interview attendance, not necessarily interview invitations? It makes sense that the ultimate factor limiting the number of invites is the number of staff available, which of course is unaffected by virtual interviews.
To clarify I’m just pointing out that the numbers on the spreadsheet for this particular school did not align with what was told to us.
I get that you're mentioning not having to travel for interviews, but why would someone turn down an interview this early in the game when MD schools don't start releasing decisions until on or after 10/15? It would only make sense to do every one up until you have an acceptance. At least that is the logic that is guiding me.
Many med schools are already booking into November. People who find out of the 15th would cancel pretty often after being accepted. But there has already been a few Reddit premed threads in which a large number of applicants said they would be attending all interviews regardless of acceptances
Many schools last year did issue more IIs due to fear of what @voxveritatisetlucis is talking about, as well as in response to the unexpected explosion in applications. What @gyngyn is saying, that anyone can verify by checking out last year's school specific threads or the WL support thread, is that what @voxveritatisetlucis is speculating about did not come to pass.
So if we shouldn't count on more IIs going out than last year, should we expect about the same as last year (so still more than usual) or fewer as gyngyn stated (so closer to pre-covid times)?
I'm not an insider like @gyngyn, so I don't have that perspective. But, as an applicant, it doesn't make sense to me that adcoms would cut back, because, in a virtual world, more interviews doesn't cost them anything but a little time, and it gives them more choices.
Ya, I guess that makes a lot of sense. So I'm assuming post-II A rates this cycle will most likely be comparable to the last cycle...I'm not an insider like @gyngyn, so I don't have that perspective. But, as an applicant, it doesn't make sense to me that adcoms would cut back, because, in a virtual world, more interviews doesn't cost them anything but a little time, and it gives them more choices.
Keeping in mind that in person interviews always cost candidates way more than schools, considering travel and lodging for us and lunch and swag for them, money was never really the constraining element for them. As @LizzyM said, it's faculty time, both to conduct the interview and then to deliberate afterwards. That said, to the extent they made the adjustment last year, out of an abundance of caution and out of a nod to the significantly increased pool, it's difficult for me as an applicant to see why they would now cut back, and thereby limit their ultimate choices, just to save a little time.
This is, however, a question better posed to @gyngyn. @Goro has already said his school isn't doing more. Does @gyngyn know that her school is actually doing less? Regardless of what one school is doing here or there, my guess would be the number of IIs will be relatively static across the board as compared to last cycle.
FWIW, we all had the same speculation a few years ago about NYU when it went tuition free. Many people thought they would cut number of IIs down significantly since their yield was sure to skyrocket. Sure enough, their yield did double, from around 1/3 to 2/3, meaning they could have cut the number of IIs in half to fill their class with the same post-II acceptance rate.
But they didn't, apparently because they already had the capacity to see around 1,000 people per cycle. So they continue to do that. The chance of scoring an A after an interview has plummeted as a result, but they like choosing from among 1,000 candidates, so they continue to do so. My guess is that the same will apply with virtual interviews, and that schools will not scale back just because they realize they can. We'll see!
No reason they wouldn't be. Things worked out reasonably well for most schools. One or two overshot by a little and had to ask a few people to defer after being accepted. A few more actually had a lot less WL movement than usual, when we all thought there would be more due to what @voxveritatisetlucis was speculating about.
Yup! MD programs
The real cost of interviewing candidates is the time away from "productivity" from welcoming, insightful and thorough evaluators.
I totally understand, but isn't this the whole point?
What they told us at Pitt was that the additional interviews turned out to be of little use. Essentially, they tracked the "extra" interviews they gave, and extremely few admits came from that pile (and I'm assuming that they also deems those admits easily replaceable by others not in the "extra" batch). Therefore, they concluded the extra time and effort wasn't worth it.
A surplus of acceptable candidates does no good with a fixed number of seats.
Very interesting! This runs counter to the argument that applicants on the margin are fungible, but I guess it is what it is.
Totally agree about the fixed number of seats. The argument would be that arbitrary cuts are made at the margins, and that even greater arbitrary cuts are made with a larger pool. I also understand that the entire undertaking involves thousands of hours, but I'm talking about hundreds of incremental hours to increase an interview pool by 20-30%, to match the increase in the applicant pool.
We are not matching the pool. We are filling the required number of seats.
Understood. But, if you don't match the pool, you will be arbitrarily eliminating more and more highly attractive candidates without ever meeting them.
If they want to waste everyone's time, that's their business.
Touche!
And I guess the silver lining, for those of us fortunate enough to score precious IIs at schools that are cutting back from last year, is that our chances of receiving an A increase meaningfully! I'd still rather have a better chance of receiving an II, and worry about the As later, but, I see your point.
Tbh, as an early applicant, I would rather have fewer IIs so I have a higher chance of an A, at least given what two schools I interviewed at told me. Apparently the extra interviews were largely given to late applicants.
I understand. Once you have a few IIs, the calculus is easy, and the focus turns from just getting IIs to reducing competition. So, let's wind back to the beginning of the cycle -- would you rather schools send out more IIs, with a lower chance of converting them to As, or less?
Tbh, my situation hasn't changed that much from beginning to now. I was hoping for IIs then, and I am still hoping for IIs now. At the same time, I hoped that schools weren't giving extra IIs. An unfortunate combination haha.I understand. Once you have a few IIs, the calculus is easy, and the focus turns from just getting IIs to reducing competition. So, let's wind back to the beginning of the cycle -- would you rather schools send out more IIs, with a lower chance of converting them to As, or less?
Whatever you say, I GUARANTEE you that, even though it's still early, pretty much everyone with zero IIs to date would prefer more IIs.
If the situation is more IIs, but no change in chances of As, I'd prefer fewer IIs. I want to be able to trust that the IIs I get are demonstrating a school's actual interest in me, rather than "eh, we got time for a couple more interviews, let's do the best of the Rs."I understand. Once you have a few IIs, the calculus is easy, and the focus turns from just getting IIs to reducing competition. So, let's wind back to the beginning of the cycle -- would you rather schools send out more IIs, with a lower chance of converting them to As, or less?
Whatever you say, I GUARANTEE you that, even though it's still early, pretty much everyone with zero IIs to date would prefer more IIs.
Understood. Again, are you really saying that if you had nothing today you wouldn't be hoping for more IIs rather than less?
I have nothing today. I prefer fewer IIs that are genuine over more IIs that mean nothing. Don't get me wrong, getting that first II is going to be super exciting. But I still want the IIs I get to mean something.
Okay. I guess that's why Baskin-Robbins has 31 flavors!
They all mean something, and they are all genuine, so I'm not sure where you are going with that. Schools that are sending out more IIs are doing so because there are more attractive candidates they want to meet, not because they have free time on their hands, so they are choosing to jerk around marginal candidates before rejecting them.
In other words, the law of diminishing returns apply. For some schools, if I'm to believe those spreadsheets, I wonder why they don't interview fewer applicants. A less than 25% acceptance rate looks like an opportunity for improvement. Are there that many duds discovered in their interview process or are they splitting hairs when discerning acceptable candidates? Could a relatively short pre-screen interview help reduce the number of full IIs? I've read about one school that does this.
When admissions deans retire, the new ones don't want to risk an inadequate number of desirable matriculants, so they use metrics similar to the ones that were previously successful. By the time they are confident enough to make innovations, LCME will be planning a visit, so no one wants to rock the boat. By the next opportunity, they are ready to retire (or move on) and the cycle repeats.
On the flip side, it's more likely that late applicants are hurt even more. It's more likely they'll just run out of II spots earlier than that substantially more applicants get IIs unless that was originally part of the plan.
But couldn't this simply happen by shifting the mix of IIs without actually increasing the number? Duke is one of the very few schools that has provided transparency in this area, and what they have published indicates that a greater percentage of URM applicants receive IIs as compared to the rest of their pool, and a greater percentage of URM interviewees receive As as compared to the rest of their pool. No need to increase the number of IIs to achieve this.
I'm not sure if there is enough data out there to analyze the following claim, but would you say that post interview acceptance rates are higher for URMs compared to their White/Asian counterparts at the same school? I just know of one school that reported URM offers after interviews, but I was wondering if this would be a reasonable theory.
You hit the nail on the head. The important thing to realize, however, is that all the top schools are chasing the exact same candidates. So, while their chances of receiving an II and then an A are higher than the rest of the pool, they are a tiny fraction of the pool and they can each only occupy one seat at the end of the day. So, what happens with them does not materially impact what happens to everyone else.
