Off to the Races

Let the speculation cease.  Since January 4 at  5:00 PM CST applicants to U of Chicago's Booth School of Business have been wondering when interview invitations would start.  An email sent to a limited number of applicants announced that invites would start on February 25, 2012.  The only problem with that info is that the mid decision deadline by which ALL interview invites (and outright rejections) would be announced is February 15, 2012.  Obviously, Feb. 25 is a typo.  But what's the real date?  Let the GMAT Club forums be set ablaze with theories.

I figured Feb. 25 was really supposed to be January 25.  Others tried to determine the Round 2 invite window based upon the Round 1 window.  In Round 1 invites went out for 1 week so many thought that Round 2 would have a similar time frame, making January 25 too soon.  Some said Feb. 5, but I highly doubted the admissions committee would take a break from watching the Super Bowl (GO GIANTS) to send off invites to a bunch of eager beaver applicants.  Because key dates tend to land on a Wednesday some speculated that Feb. 8 would be the day.  And of course questions about the day invites would start eventually delved into the minutia of what TIME the invites would go out.  Of course there was someone who had actually compiled the email time stamps that R1 applicants had shared from their invites.  Some people thought all of the questioning was a bit neurotic and crazy.

Since all of the theories had merit I didn't know which one would prove accurate.  When Booth sent me a "You're Invited:" email at 10:09 AM I briefly thought that my initial conclusions were correct.  Upon realizing that I was only invited to have lunch with Booth's student affinity groups, I figured that my assumption was wrong (and also wanted to curse out Booth's email marketing guru for the horrible timing).  Alas, at 2:09 PM EST the proof of my deductions showed up in my inbox. 

Dear Cheetarah1980,

Congratulations!  We have evaluated your application and are extending an invitation for you to interview with us in the next phase of our admissions process. 

So we are off to the races! Announcing that the invites have started to my fellow applicants on GMAT Club set off the inevitable shit storm of paranoia and premature pronouncements of defeat.  I will say here what I said there:

WHEN YOU GET THE INVITE DOES NOT MATTER!

I am 99.99999999% sure that Booth releases invites in random order. They do this to not overwhelm interviewers with a ton of requests at one time. Considering that interviews must be complete by Feb. 24 it is reasonable that they would release invites in waves. I am positive that the admissions committee has not finished reviewing even half of the apps yet. People who got invites today were simply beneficiaries of the luck of the draw (i.e. our apps have already been reviewed).

Since interview invites started today that means there is 3 weeks of invitations. There is no reason for anyone to feel rejected and defeated at this point. There is no way to know or even guess the percentage of total invites that went out today. But remember, your invite isn't dependent upon anyone else's. Even if there's only 1 left to go out, if it's yours it's yours. But we're nowhere near that point.

So for the sake of everyone on this thread please pace yourselves on the paranoia and crazy. Let it out gradually when there's more reason to start freaking out and over analyzing things. If you start at a level 10 now you won't make it to Feb. 15 (because I might kill you). It will make this a much more pleasant 3 weeks for everyone.

Congratulations to everyone who was put out of their misery today with an invite.  To those who are still waiting, best of luck! I hope your invite comes in the next wave, but if not I'm hoping that it comes, period.