Interview prep / interview scheduling

[JustForPretend]

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I have a few questions on interviews and interview scheduling. Basically, I have a few offers and I am not sure how to schedule them relative to each other.

1. How important is it to get an earlier date rather than a later one? For a place with non-rolling admit, does it matter?
2. How stressful and taxing are these interviews? Would having two in one week be too many? Is one each week for multiple consecutive weeks too many?
3. How much individual prep would you recommended for each school? How time consuming is this?

The answers to a lot of these questions are certainly "well, it depends..." but for people who have gone through this, what has your experience been?

Thanks for any thoughts you might have.

 

[Lil Mick]

1) For non-rolling schools, it won't matter. At my school (and many others with rolling admissions), interviewing early is better, as spots fill up. People later in the year are usually wait-listed.

2) They were kind of fun, for the most part. However, you need to factor in traveling time and a full day or two of interviews. You wind up missing a few days of school for some schools' interviews (4 days for one longer interview out of state in the middle of the week), and it can be hard to make that up if you have a lot of interviews.

3) Make sure you know your research and where you see the project going. It can also help if you know what sort of research your interviewers do (maybe it's something of interest to you).