The State Of Hope

Not Obama-style hope, but interview invitation-style hope.

I've got interview invites in hand from Chicago and UVA -- hooray! I would be a lot more relaxed about the others if I were sure that these interview invites would translate into admits, but I think both schools interview more than half of applicants. The ClearAdmit guide to the Chicago interview explicitly indicates that the interview is not an indication that the applicant has been "pre-screened" for admission but rather just another component of the application process. I read that as "Chicago hasn't yet decided to ding me," as opposed to "Chicago is nearly ready to admit me."*

So what schools have I not yet heard from? Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley.

• Harvard started sending out interview invites Jan 25 and claims that it will continue to do so until the notification date in March, per its admissions blog. But the general consensus seems to be that the vast majority of interview invitations will be out by mid-Feb, so I've decided to give up hope on Valentine's Day. Honestly, I've kind of already given up hope though. I thought I had a strong application, but I feel like I've already been dinged.
  
  
• One rumor has it that Stanford's admissions office started sending out interview invitations on Jan 21. But another rumor has it that they hadn't sent any invites out yet as of Feb 1. I'm not sure if I'd even know if they'd started going out. After all, because they have a smaller class I think they interview far fewer people than, say, Harvard.
  
  
• I don't think Berkeley has sent out many interview invites yet. I've only seen one or two reported in various forums online. I could be wrong about this, though. In any case I am keeping Super Saturday weekend open (I'm on the West Coast for work the week before and after).
  

So I don't actually have very high hopes for any of these schools: Harvard because it's already so late, Stanford because they admit so few people, and Berkeley because -- well, I don't know why.

* I bought the ClearAdmit guide on the recommendation of B-School Bound; his recommendation was unsurprisingly quoted by ClearAdmit itself here. I don't think buying them was a bad decision. After all, it's hard to put a dollar value on any insight in these guides. Who knows how much any one interview question really makes or breaks an application, after all? That said, I was disappointed by how little school-specific content was in the Chicago guide. So the guide was helpful for sure, but not as helpful as I'd hoped.