December vs. January Application Deadline

[Ktf722]

I know there's no hard and fast way to accurately gauge this, but I'm interested in hearing people's experiences: I gather that individuals whose applications were due in December or earlier are usually hearing about interviews/results right about now, but what about those whose applications were due in January, even as late as yesterday? 

One person told me he had his interview and acceptance within a month of the January 15th due date, which seems unbelievably efficient for a graduate admissions process. Emphasis on "unbelievably!" Has anyone else had similar experiences?

[th3redrabbit]

I think this will depend on a few things, including the field. Some fields don't really appear to interview and instead accept students and then have recruitment events.

Most of my applications were due in December for both neuroscience, psychology, and interdepartmental programs, but I had one application due yesterday (and also one in early November that I just heard from a week or two ago). I think that to be competitive and not miss out on good applicants, the late due date programs will have to begin reviewing applications right away and make decisions. Last year, I had applications due in December and didn't hear until almost the end of January about my interviews in February. It just depends on the school and when they actually start reviewing the applications and some places seem to wait until about two weeks out from interview dates to start sending notifications. 

But all of it is highly variable, unfortunately.

 

I hope this helps. Not sure what field you're in. 

[Bayesian1701]

A possible pattern I noticed in stats PhD programs is the high application volume programs were slightly more likely to have an due date earlier in the process.   This was not a hard and fast rule and some programs known to get hundreds of applications did have late deadlines.  

Winter break and the holidays make things a little difficult for early deadline programs to make decisions.  But, I could see why  there would be little time difference between a 12/15 deadline program and 1/08 deadline program when they release decisions.  I feel like you need to add 1-2 weeks above the normal response time in your field to for 12/1 and 12/15 deadlines to cover the holidays.  I could see how certain programs and certain fields would be able to make decisions in 4 weeks, but a 8 week waiting process could be normal for some programs and is kinda what I am expecting for one of my programs (A&M) since they have a free app that doesn’t require anything official so hundreds and hundreds (500+) of people apply.  

[TakeruK]

I would say that any deadline on or after 12/15 is equivalent to a deadline on 1/1. 

For another data point on quick turnaround, my grad program usually has a due date of 1/1. Evaluations and deliberations are made during the first 2 work weeks of January. Decisions are sent out during the 3rd week and the visit dates occur between the 2nd week of Feb and the first week of March. We don't interview and we generally do not waitlist (you're either accepted or rejected but rejections do get notified later on).

We are a small program with a small number of applicants (We make about 40 offers out of a pool of probably 200-300 applicants) and every prof reads every application relevant to their subfield (about 30-40 each?). Those two weeks are quite a busy time for our profs---I know most meeting requests (outside of the standard advising meetings with their students) are met with "please get back to me after admissions!"

Ultimately each subfield accepts 5-10 people out of the 30-40 in their pool (some subfields are larger than others) so it's actually not too bad. From talking to the profs, I know they "triage" so it's easy to quickly read over all 40 applications and immediately eliminate the bottom half (for example). So spending some time over 2 weeks to carefully deliberate ~20 applications is certainly doable. In addition, when it comes to grad admissions in my field, the "early bird gets the worm" does seem to work out. It's in the profs' best interest to get the decisions out fast and start the recruitment process in order to attract the best students!