Help! Two clinical psychology interviews on the same day.

[Aminoacidalanine]

I have received two interview invites for the Clinical Psychology program that have an overlap. One school has an interview day on Friday, Jan 29 from 8 AM to 5 PM, and an optional event on the same night. The other school has dinner with graduate students on Friday night, interviews on Saturday, and another dinner on Saturday with faculty and graduate students. This school has a higher rank for the clinical program. Both faculty members do research that closely fits with my interests. Travelling between these two cities takes 4 hours minimum by flight, and I prefer not to fly overnight due to health and safety reasons. 

I am thinking it would be difficult to attend both interviews on the designated days, and am thinking about options to request a different date or a skype/phone interview. But I'm not sure which school I should contact.

Any advice you may have is greatly appreciated!

[Oshawott]

Assuming you haven't indicated to your POI's at either school...

The most fair way to do this is to prioritize whatever school contacted you first, and ask the other one if rescheduling would be possible. With that said, I'd think the more strategic option would be to prioritize the school that you are more likely to attend (reasons for this could range from your own preference, research interest overlap, etc.).

There's another option you could consider depending on the location of the two schools. Do you need to fly to both cities or are one of the schools more accessible for you in terms of transport? I'd say defer the school that requires less travel from where you live just because it might be easier to set up an interview in that situation.

Edited December 21, 2015 by Oshawott

[Applicant#1000]

3 hours ago, Aminoacidalanine said:

I have received two interview invites for the Clinical Psychology program that have an overlap. One school has an interview day on Friday, Jan 29 from 8 AM to 5 PM, and an optional event on the same night. The other school has dinner with graduate students on Friday night, interviews on Saturday, and another dinner on Saturday with faculty and graduate students. This school has a higher rank for the clinical program. Both faculty members do research that closely fits with my interests. Travelling between these two cities takes 4 hours minimum by flight, and I prefer not to fly overnight due to health and safety reasons. 

I am thinking it would be difficult to attend both interviews on the designated days, and am thinking about options to request a different date or a skype/phone interview. But I'm not sure which school I should contact.

Any advice you may have is greatly appreciated!

Prioritize based on where you are more likely to get in and attend

Out of curiosity, which schools are you talking about?

[ejs813]

I would suck it up and travel overnight if you have to. People dream of getting one interview to Clinical programs let alone 2. I know it's not ideal and it is exhausting but you want to make sure you don't lose out on any opportunities.

I wouldn't want to travel overnight or literally back to back either but it's only one weekend and then Sunday/Monday you can crash and sleep the days away

[TakeruK]

If you don't reschedule, you will miss at least one Friday night event (maybe even both Friday night events). I think the evening events with the students is really important! Also, traveling like that might make you not be as alert/do as well in your interviews. I would suggest that you try to reschedule the interviews, in this order (by "prioritize" I mean don't reschedule it, but it does not necessarily mean that it is more important):

1. Prioritize the one that is scheduling your visit along with other prospective students. (Not sure how this field works---in mine, some schools schedule all the visits at once, and others have individual visits). Individual visits are easier to reschedule so reschedule that one.

2. Prioritize the one that has the longer visiting schedule. Although in your example, the second school is only slightly longer (the Friday dinner). 

3. Prioritize the one that asked you first (**this is assuming you have not already committed to visiting with either school at this point). If one school asked you weeks in advance though, then maybe this should be a higher consideration.

4. Prioritize the one that is harder to travel to (I'm assuming that the difference in total travel time from home to either school, if you were to visit on different weekends, would be around 4-5 hours given what you said, so this is why this criteria is lower. If it was a school on another continent, then I'd say definitely prioritize that one!)

I just also want to say that asking a school to reschedule your interview because of a conflict should be an okay thing to do and it does not mean that you are not as interested in that school. That is, you should not consider asking to reschedule to have a negative impact on your admission chances (as long as you do so professionally and right after you get the interview invite instead of waiting a long time). I mean, maybe it will but my point of view is that if they are not able to accommodate a reasonable request, then maybe attending that program isn't a good fit anyways. 

And finally, I wouldn't want to just visit for the interview and leave immediately. I'd stay for at least half a day or a full day to explore the city, do some touristy things, scope out potential neighbourhoods that you'd live in etc. You'll have to pay for the extra day(s) yourself of course, but personally, I think it's well worth it and also provides a lot of useful information if/when you have to decide between multiple schools. And especially if the school is in a place you always wanted to visit---might as well do at least one cool thing while you're there since if you don't get into the school / don't accept the offer, you might not visit again for awhile. 

[artsy16]

Did school #2 indicate that the Friday dinner was required? I received an interview for one school and they made sure to stress that the dinner with graduate students the night before is completely optional. 

 

Not the best choice, but I would try to push it. I'm sure I would be stressed and tired, but to me it's preferable to attend both than to do a Skype interview (although schools say it doesn't matter, I'm sure it does). 

 

@TakeruKIn psychology, usually there are one or two visiting days that schools host. Arranging an individual visit would not be the same experience as attending the interview day. 

[rising_star]

While a separate interview day or doing the interview via Skype may not be ideal, neither is being exhausted at an interview and underperforming. That is, this is one of the most important interviews of your life to date. Do you want to show up exhausted, miss out on the chance to interact with (potentially) your future colleagues, not get to explore your (potentially) future home city, etc.? To me, the potential negatives of doing things back to back and missing out on the "optional" events is way worse than asking to reschedule one visit.

This happens all the time. You are not the first nor will you be the last applicant to have a scheduling conflict. For example, see the following post:

 

[TakeruK]

29 minutes ago, artsy16 said:

 

@TakeruKIn psychology, usually there are one or two visiting days that schools host. Arranging an individual visit would not be the same experience as attending the interview day. 

I definitely agree that the individual visit would not be the same experience! My program plans a super awesome 2-day event but once in awhile, a student cannot make it and has an individual one instead. It's not as good because 1) you miss out on some really cool lab tours, 2) you miss out meeting potential cohort-mates and 3) students and faculty are busier and may have less time/energy to talk to you and show you around. The individual visit is still preferable to a Skype-only visit though.

Also--when I was visiting, I had to reschedule one of my visits. I thought I might be the only one but it turns out 2 other students also rescheduled their visits to the same day as me!

And even if the dinner on Friday night is optional, for me, it would be one of the most important part of the visit. When I was a visiting student, the extra time away from the campus and with students-only provided me with a lot of really good insights in what the department culture is like and especially about any negative things that students are less willing to say at the department. I made some friends that I saw again at conferences (and some of the grad students I visited are now postdocs at my school!). And from the point of view on the "other side", as a current student, I find the social/dinner events a much better place to share the non-academic details about the program: things like where to live, pros/cons of advisors, what courses are like etc. During my daytime meetings with prospective students, I only get ~10-15 minutes and usually with a group at once, so we only briefly cover the details about the research our group does, and just barely able to answer specific questions by each prospective student.

As for the extra day to explore, personally, I based my decision equally between the academic program and the location, so I wanted to spend almost equal time discovering both! I think it was totally worth the extra hotel night (sometimes I had a friend in the city I stayed with for free) and extra meal costs to get the additional ~24 hours in your potential new home.

[VentureIntoNothingness]

I have had to reschedule one interview. I think you should at least secure one school that you feel like you have a great chance to get in. Some other things you may want to take into consideration in rescheduling the interview is that you may want to schedule the schools you are more interested in at later dates (so that you have "practiced" interviews with other schools). Other strategic factor playing into this can be the primacy effect/recency effect. According to a friend who was successful in her season, rescheduling a group interview (into an individual interview) has its benefits. It is true that you will miss out a lot of information about the school, but you will get to see the department in its normal working and usually you can make a more particular impression. 

[Oshawott]

I highly suggest against taking the overnight flight option. It is better to reschedule (for a reasonable cause!) than to perform poorly at an interview. As a personal example, I am an introverted person and I find a full-day interview exhausting. I was rejected post-interview because my POI had concerns on how I would adjust to moving to a new location because behaviorally, I was described as being too reserved (really just need to decompress a lot and this was literally the first time I've had to do back-to-back interviews and social events). If you can handle such a hectic schedule without it draining you (I couldn't even handle a day!), then go for it, but I just want to add to the caution others have put forth regarding this option.

I'd also note that this particular school, due to the size of the program, knew that not all students could make it and actually had an alternate interview day. Explore the options but its better to reschedule and be at full strength than to jeopardize an interview because this is a "once-in-a-lifetime chance" because its not. At the interview stage, schools are just as much trying to recruit you as you are trying to convince them that you are worth the investment, so they'll accommodate.