This is purely conjecture on my part, but the change in the way MCATs are taken might have something to do with it. There are nearly twenty test dates this year, and it only takes a month to get scores back. Traditionally, there were huge backups in June and October (when the April and August scores came back) that "bottle-necked" the whole system for weeks. It used to be that if you got your application in by even August for example, that you would have a huge advantage over people that didn't take the MCAT until August because their scores wouldn't come out for two months-- and then it might take 6 weeks to process the applications...then get secondaries, etc. It meant August MCAT people might not even get interviews until the following year. Things will be a lot more spread out from now on. It could conceivably get to the point where there is no true "early" advantage anymore. Remember, it's just speculation, but I don't think that they are in a hurry because they won't have to deal with those two "bottle-necks" this year.
