I'll field this one as I have extensive (read: this past interview season) experience in it.
Take the nov/dec. February is risky.
I applied to somewhere around 16 programs, got interviews at all of them. The last one to send me an invite was at the beginning of december. The first one was within 2 days of the september submission date. Nearly all of them had responded to me by the middle of october, and offered interview dates starting in october and extending (for most) part way through january. There were a couple of programs that offered interview dates in february but most had stopped at that point. Path programs seem to interview earlier than others.
Now, some people have brought up "how late do the programs keep offering interviews," particularly if one is a marginal or perhaps a "Reach" candidate for certain schools. I don't know. But like I said, most programs will do the bulk of their interviewing in november, early december, and early january. If they contact you late in their search efforts or perhaps you delay in contacting them, you might be stuck with less desirable dates. Usually these are mid week dates, because people don't like to travel mid week, they like to put interviews on mondays or fridays.
Here was my interview schedule: First interview middle of october. Then, I had my medicine subI from mid october to mid november, but I could have just as easily scheduled most of my interviews for that month and been done. Then, I did 2 or 3 interviews per week for the second half of november and first 3 weeks in december. I scheduled a couple for early january, but ended up only going on one, and that was the third week in january. Thus I had most of january off, which now leaves me in the unfortunate predicament of having to do a 4th year clinical rotation in May, instead of doing one in january and taking May off, because I am an idiot.
Hope that answers your question, probably the longest answer in history to a question that could and should have been answered in less than 5 lines. But I am verbose.
Any other interview experiences?