How much of a difference does interviewing early make?

[zaben]

---

Members don't see this ad.

Hey all,

Just curious if anyone has a ballpark estimate of how much of a difference interviewing in say the first or second interview group makes in post interview acceptance rates?

example: school A has a 50% post interview acceptance rate via US news. Is it more like 70% for early interviewers and 30% for late interviewers and averages out to 50%? Is it always 50% and interviewing early makes no difference? is it more like 60/40?

Just wondering if anyone knows or if there is even a way to know. And by early I mean September-October and late is December-April.

 

[godawg300]

Hey all,

Just curious if anyone has a ballpark estimate of how much of a difference interviewing in say the first or second interview group makes in post interview acceptance rates?

example: school A has a 50% post interview acceptance rate via US news. Is it more like 70% for early interviewers and 30% for late interviewers and averages out to 50%? Is it always 50% and interviewing early makes no difference? is it more like 60/40?

Just wondering if anyone knows or if there is even a way to know. And by early I mean September-October and late is December-April.

I'm sure this might depend on if the school is rolling or non-rolling. I'm sure early helps but who knows how much. I'll be able to shed my n=1 after the cycle though since I have many between September-October and then some from November-January,

 

[claduva94]

Depends on the school. There aren't stats available to give you a numeric answer.

 

[Ace Khalifa]

So I've been to 3 early interviews already due to receiving "first-round" II's, and I have a 4th coming up on 10/15. From what I could tell, all the other interviewees on my interview days seemed to be really strong candidates for admission. Half of them had graduated college already, so I think schools are starting to favor "nontraditional" applicants to a degree. I do think that early interviewing does make a difference, provided you don't fail your interview, of course.

 

[LizzyM]

It very much depends on the school. Also, you'd need to control for the strength of the applicants because some schools will interview stronger applicants earlier in the season but there will be exceptions to every rule in that regard. (As a group, the early interviewees might be stronger than the later interviewees but there may be a mix of weaker and stronger in each interview cohort.)

My school tries to "save" enough offers for the later applicants but it might be 60-40 and 55-45 between early and late interviewees after controlling for strength of the interview pool.