wonderwoman
tunasalad
bmcrhino
For those getting invites: When did you apply relative to the October 1 deadline?
Asked another way, did anyone who applied the night before or the day of 10/1 receive invites? Wondering if their review process is chronological, or if it's truly randomized.
I submitted the morning of 10/1, so don't think its chronological.
This is of course more useless theorizing. But I'm guessing each school does prioritize candidates in the invite process - not necessarily "strongest first" but maybe "we want to fill this industry bucket first" or "here is the perfect mix of x and y" or "here is what we want for middle market PE in round x". For top schools (esp HBS and Stanford) they probably also invite the potential 'rock stars' early so they can get them in front of an interviewer sooner and see if they're for real. I do think the metrics are obviously different for each school. For example, I have a non standard background for HBS and Stanford that will most likely take someone having a personal interest for me to have a shot of getting in (I was put on FC at HBS, so this would make sense - they may think they'll like my story but want to see if they like any others better). So schools will probably take a bit longer to decide which of the 'story' candidates they want to accept, and maybe also how to fill the URM 'buckets' (obviously they will have strong URM candidates on a standalone basis but probably put a bit extra time into the more borderline candidates). Booth on the other hand invited me on day two, I think there the strong GMAT and GPA with enough extracurriculars and experience made them feel confident extending an early interview invitation (which is great because I think the curriculum is an incredible fit).
If I were to pointlessly theorize further I would expect a pretty weak but positive correlation between invite date and acceptance. Just because they invite a bunch of strong MBB consultants early doesn't mean they want them all. On the same ticket, just because they invite 20 people with interesting 'stories' late doesn't mean they are yet sold on everyone, but who knows if they plan on keeping 10% or 90% of such a pool.
Keep in mind they are trying to build a demographically attractive class, so it makes sense to put together the sub groups of people competing against each other on whatever metrics at the same time with the outliers being their own group later on (or a few outlier groups built one at a time). Then later the individual sub groups can be whittled down and filled in with deferred/wait list candidates.
Either way, we sure do spend a lot of time over analyzing it. I guess this is what happens when a bunch of smart motivated individuals have to sit and wait in a dark forum together.