Do I have a less chance of admission if my interview date is much later?

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hi,

I just got an interview at a school I am interested in attending. I scheduled my interview the minute I got the date. However, the earliest date I could find was all the way in March. Will this negatively impact me? I know I am really grateful to have an interview, and I understand that a lot of people don't have interviews but it still feels far later than I expected especially since many offers have already been sent out earlier in the year. It's my first app cycle, and I don't really know what to expect.

 

[polymerization]

Congrats! The article From Waitlist to Offer explains LM's staircase analogy.

Because every school z-scores their applicants post-II differently, it's impossible to tell. If you anticipate being a high-priority candidate for that school, you still have a shot. Do the best you can on your interviews and hope that the staircase is in your favor.

The downside of coming in "late" is that there are just going to be more people interviewed, so more people will be on the staircase already.

So if let's say a school decides to accept profiles that score 10/10 post-II and waitlist everyone else...and then pick out the 8s and 9s off the waitlist as the cycle elapses (and, say, you're an 8)...

What might happen is that if you had applied early enough for them to actually go down the list and accept some 8s and 9s, you had a better chance at that point because fewer people had been interviewed (and so you had a better shot of being pulled).

Toward the end of the cycle, each school has interviewed multiples of applicants for each seat. It is much more likely that if people are being pulled off the WL, the long list of 9s would have to decline and then you would have to hope you are a lucky 8 that is given an offer.

Obviously I don't know how granular it can get when it comes to X vs. Y candidate, and even the way I'm presenting this is a huge oversimplification... but I hope I could convey to you that if it's meant to be, it'll be.

 

[Med Ed]

Very much depends on the school. Some of the low-tier/high-volume places, for example, fill a lot of their seats in the spring.

 

[LelouchLamperouge]

Depends on the school. Some schools at interviewing for their waitlist at this point, while other schools are interviewing everyone who as a good chance of being accepted. Which program is this?

 

[doctorendgame]

If it's the ones I got an interview from, yes and you shouldn't bother interviewing with them. If not, then it depends on the school.

 

[LizzyM]

The downside of coming in "late" is that there are just going to be more people interviewed, so more people will be on the staircase already.

The whole point of the wide staircase is that you can go to the top step, or one down from the top, etc at any time in the interview cycle. Even schools that accept some applicants early and others later in the season can put you on the top step regardless of when you interview. I would wager that many schools interview enough applicants to fill the class in the first month of interviews... the rest are not interviewing for the waitlist. Everyone is being ranked throughout the cycle and the top applicants are being made offers throughout the cycle. That doesn't mean you won't be waitlisted, or left in silence for months and later waitlisted or rejected but I can't imagine a school that isn't continuing to interview hoping to snatch up some late-cycle stars.

 

[polymerization]

The whole point of the wide staircase is that you can go to the top step, or one down from the top, etc at any time in the interview cycle. Even schools that accept some applicants early and others later in the season can put you on the top step regardless of when you interview. I would wager that many schools interview enough applicants to fill the class in the first month of interviews... the rest are not interviewing for the waitlist. Everyone is being ranked throughout the cycle and the top applicants are being made offers throughout the cycle. That doesn't mean you won't be waitlisted, or left in silence for months and later waitlisted or rejected but I can't imagine a school that isn't continuing to interview hoping to snatch up some late-cycle stars.

So, I want to ask this question in a way that you are actually at liberty to answer.

Assuming a ranked WL school that generally interviews its most promising, meritorious candidates first... and that, as you claim, could easily fill the class in the first month of interviews... we can assume few of them will be outright rejected and the resulting waitlist of candidates will be similarly composed of a high-density of applicants the school believed would score highly post-II.

It is hard for me to imagine that, with the harsh culling of applicants through the interview process, that very many would populate the lower steps of the staircase (if they were just weird on the interview, they would've gotten an R). I am imagining less of the wide staircase of a grand ballroom, and more a step stool in which most applicants are elbowing one another to get onto the top step and the discernment between individual applicants is much harder because everyone is practically at the threshold. It would seem like the distinctions between admitted applicants and those on the top step are similarly vague...

We could normalize those scores again so that we have more obvious distinctions between applicants, but the more you do this, the more you are in some ways splitting hairs and/or using math to abstract differences that are so small, they no longer correlate with any meaningful metric.

For someone like me with less competitive metrics, I foresee two big problems with interviewing late. The first is what I mentioned earlier, there are just more people on the staircase. But the second is still a selection pressure: if your initial WL is composed of people the admissions team has already vouched as high-value by any qualitative standard set by the committee, the probability of "less promising" diamonds-in-the-rough not only outperforming the earlier admitted candidates, but also a set of benched wunderkinds seems increasingly unlikely (and laughable as a strategy).

I understand, in theory, that schools don't interview for the waitlist, but I feel I'm missing a crucial piece of information to make that make sense. I know, intuitively, that there must not be "no chance," but I do think the slope can rise enough such that the "uphill climb" is essentially equivalent to "no chance."

 

[LizzyM]

First, I can tell you that when 25% of applicants arrive on day 1, and many schools can interview only 15-25% of all applicants, we are interviewing top ranked applicants all season long. In fact, many applicants who were complete in July aren't interviewed until November because it takes that long to work through the bolus. And there are plenty of applicants who arrive later but are top notch -- particularly non-trads and those who didn't get great advising regarding deadlines. (There are people who think that this is like college and grad school and you can apply 24 hours before the deadline and be fine -- and if the applicant is 10/10 we're glad to interview them, even on the last day of the cycle.)


It might be hard to imagine that many of the top candidates would be on the lower steps of the staircase after interview but believe me, there are plenty of cringe-worthy applicants and those who lack social awareness who end up being demoted after interview.

Also, with regard to the staircase, it is wide like the steps of the US Capitol, not narrow with applicants jostling for positions.

If you have less competitive metrics, you might have gotten an interview by the skin of your teeth and where you land on the staircase before the interview is not great but the hope is that you'll blow up away and move up.

Sometimes you are being included despite the less competitive metrics because you have something we don't see often that makes us say, "we don't get many applicants who.... Let's interview this one and see if they're a good fit." That out of the ordinary thing might be military service, rural hometown or a state with a very small population, profoundly non-trad (professional performing artist, professional athlete, teen mom who went to school at an older age). This isn't to say that you won't get waitlisted but we can fill the waitlist very easily with applicants who are good enough to be considered, before interview, as good enough to admit if the interview is as good as the electronic file.