Should I be concerned if I have a lot of gaps in my interview schedule?

[Corks]

I'm going to be interviewing at UMich for the Biomedical Engineering PhD program, which is one of my top choices, so I'm pretty excited! However, I just got my tentative itinerary for my trip, and I noticed that of the 8 half-hour slots allotted for one-on-one interviews with PIs, only four of mine are filled. Granted, I only listed 6 professors of interest when I was asked, but I also wasn't sure of how many I should have sent in at the time. 

Should I be concerned that I'm given so much free time? I know that I'll probably appreciate the breaks to gather myself between interviews, but I'm worried that more competitive students may have all slots filled and have to go back-to-back with interviews. Should I be worried about my situation, or am I overthinking it?

Thanks!

[Elephas]

I don't think you should be concerned those gaps may have unofficial events running during them like opportunities to visit actual labs and speak/network with grad students.

[TakeruK]

I would not be worried. First, you say this is a "tentative" itinerary so things are certainly subject to change. When is your interview? If it's more than a week away, I'm sure there will be other events scheduled later. If not, feel free to use this time in your own way to get to know the students. If these slots are still empty when you arrive for your visit, check with whomever has been coordinating your schedules if you could use this time to either 1) explore the campus, 2) chat with students informally, 3) learn about on-campus resources, or 4) drop into a class (get permission from the instructor, either directly or through the coordinator). Definitely take some time to rest between interviews but don't feel like if there is nothing scheduled that it means you must do nothing

From my experience, some schools schedule the days jam-packed and others have very loose schedules and things just come up (e.g. an interview may go longer, a prof or student might say, hey, if you have a spare block now, want to see a class/seminar/etc.). Sometimes students will arrange things like campus tours for you but these things are often not set in stone until the last minute, so they haven't appeared on your schedule yet, or they might be just super informal and you won't see it on the schedule at all.

[Corks]

That's reassuring to hear, thanks! The interview's only a week away, but the graduate coordinator did say that it wasn't final. Those definitely sound like some interesting things to do, though!

As a sort of follow up question, do you know how many professors a student usually speaks with during an interview? This obviously varies by school and program, but I'm wondering if there's a sort of ballpark estimate.

[TakeruK]

5 hours ago, Corks said:

That's reassuring to hear, thanks! The interview's only a week away, but the graduate coordinator did say that it wasn't final. Those definitely sound like some interesting things to do, though!

As a sort of follow up question, do you know how many professors a student usually speaks with during an interview? This obviously varies by school and program, but I'm wondering if there's a sort of ballpark estimate.

I don't think this is possible (a ballpark estimate, I mean). At one school, I only had scheduled time spots with 4 profs and one of them was the dept chair, not someone I would research with. At another school (my eventual school), I spoke with 6 out 7 available profs. At yet another school, every hour on my schedule was filled but it wasn't all prof meetings: included classes and seminars as well. Hard to ballpark estimate because the number of profs in the dept varies from school to school, the number of days per visit varies (mine were all 2 day visits though) and the number of profs relevant to your work varies too.