Multiple Choice:
When an adcom issues interviews to lots of their candidates in Round 1, that means:
1. They’re being nice
2. They have a lot of uncertainty in how the season will play out
3. Lots of applicants were disappointed on decision day
If you answered #2 and #2 both, then you would be correct!
So, which schools seemed to be very liberal in issuing interview invites in Round 1?
From our dataset, these ones did:
1. MIT
2. Wharton
3. Columbia Early Decision
The school that seemed to issue fewer invites in Round 1 than they traditionally have was Chicago Booth. Booth seems to always issue lots of invites, but the past two years they’ve been cutting them back somewhat.
Which is actually good.
If a school is going to reject you, you would far rather have them reject you early in the season.
That’s for two reasons:
1. If they reject you after the interview, it hurts WAY more. Few people expect to be rejected if they make it to the interview stage. It also often feels more like they’re rejecting YOU PERSONALLY. After all, they MET you – or at least, someone in their community did. It wasn’t like they were only rejecting your GMAT score or the essays that you had doubts about. They actually met you, and then they said, no thanks. Ouch.
2. In Round 1 at least, getting rejected at the mid-cycle release is way better, since it lets you regroup and figure out a game plan for Round 2. For Round 2, it doesn’t really matter if you get rejected earlier or later since Round 3 is a non-starter at this caliber of school anyway (at least, in most cases it is).
We don’t expect Columbia to be quite as liberal in issuing interview invites for Regular Decision. For Early Decision, we did hear of them interviewing candidates that we were somewhat surprised at (no offense if you were in this category!!) though that doesn’t mean that those people went on to an admit (though in some cases they did — woohoo congrats!!). For Regular Decision, we have no reason to believe that it’ll be any less competitive at Columbia than it always is.
Pro Tip: If you have not yet submitted your Columbia Regular Decision application, DO IT NOW!! As in, the next few days!! Really truly, it’s massively important to get that application in as soon as you possibly can. Every day matters at this stage!!
Which school seemed stingier in issuing interview invitations in Round 1 than we’ve typically seen?
Michigan Ross
No idea if these patterns will continue in Round 2 though we suspect that MIT will again be generous in invites, and less so in admits, and Wharton likely to follow that pattern too.
We’ll have to see.
Good luck to all of you who have thrown your hat in at these and all other schools!!!
Please keep us posted on your progress — anyone with an account here can update your status in the School Targets in My SnarkCenter.
Tell us what you think.