Just a quick question. I apologize if this has been covered before. Does anybody know how fast schools get back to you for interviews or rejections after applying?
I had presumed that they give interviews right away to people that they definitely want, and give rejections right away to people that they definitely don't want...and they don't do anything for the people in the middle until they see a wider applicant pool. Is this right? Does this depend on the school? Or do schools usually just give out interviews or rejections and not keep anyone waiting?
I know this may be a hard question to answer, but I was wondering what previous applicants had experienced. Thanks in advance!
The timeline is very much institution dependent, as is the style of triaging applications. You have to remember that we are receiving literally hundreds upon hundreds of applications each year - that is a lot to wade through!
Every institution has a somewhat different way of handling that, and when. We start getting applications September 1 (note this is going to change either next year or the year after that to September 15), but only the first wave. I would say that we add about 75 - 100 applications per week in September. Now then, the individual applications themselves are often in various states of completion. What an institution's tolerance for completion before offering interviews is also different from place to place, person to person.
If your application was in and complete the first week of September, I think you will start hearing from neurology programs from mid September to early October. If you are a stellar applicant, then you will likely get an offer pretty soon after your application is received. Otherwise, directors might wait until they have a certain number of applications for comparison. Remember, we only have so many interview slots to offer for those hundreds of applicants, so that also is going to impact how picky we are and comparing people. On the other hand, we don't want to wait too long or applicants become overcommitted to other interviews and don't come to ours! I think some PDs will set a date for offering interviews, and review only just before that date. Others will do a rolling invitation, inviting a certain number at one date, then some more at a later date, etc. to balance getting people early with getting the best people in the applicant pool.
Now then, remember too that a lot of you are going to end up cancelling one or more interview for a variety of reasons (btw, this is okay, we understand, but tell us as early as possible so we can fill your spot!). This will mean that throughout the interview season, we will have new slots open up. If you receive a later interview it may be due to that (or to that 'rolling invite' style). This doesn't make you any less viable as a candidate, just someone else got invited first (I have in fact filled vacancies with better applicants than the ones who cancelled, and some have ended up ranked highly and matching to our program!).
As for rejections, if there is, in the mind of the program director, something obviously flawed by their standards in your initial stats, then you might get a rejection letter quickly. But we are not in a particular hurry to get these out as they do not impact our recruitment, and some institutions may send them out in bulk once they are pretty clear who they will invite and have as backup versus not invite (remember, the majority of applicants literally can't be invited due to space issues).
So in summary, depending on when you sent out your application, you should probably be starting to receive some interview offers about now. You can expect more throughout the month of September, and a bit into October. You may see a few others dribble in the rest of October, November, December, and even January in some cases.
