Should most R3 applicants expect to hear toward the end of March? (My thinking below)
- Delayed timeline acts as a hedge to protect yield
- Invite highly competitive applicants Mar 25 and give 1-2 days to respond - encourages natural attrition from the students who are admitted and prefer Wharton / Booth
- Open floodgates as wide as necessary to lower quality candidates based on response rate from the Mar 25 cohort
- From Jan to Mar 25, rigorously prioritize preferred admits based on the application itself
- Also from Jan to Mar 25, invite applicants who have made it abundantly clear that NYU is a top choice and build a waitlist of applicants with strong stats who may not choose to remain on the waitlist after sending a confirmation in that same Mar 25 time period to stay on
Sound accurate? In this world, many applicants (highly and not highly competitive) would have to wait, but seems an ideal strategy for NYU to manage class size in the unpredictable tail of top 10 ranked schools.
I think this is spot on. If I could go back, I would've applied in the November round.