<p>I'm going up to New York for the summer, but I'm not sure when so I'm a little uncertain about when I will be able to visit/interview. How far ahead do you have to call them in order to get an interview?</p>
<p>Depends when you’re going. Saturday slots for the whole interview season fill VERY fast-- often by very close to the beginning of school. Next come dates before winter break! since most people like to get interviews done in the fall. Post-winter slots fill last, but DO often fill, so if you WAIT until January to call, it might be a problem. But those slots don’t fill very fast.</p>
<p>Arrange your interviews as soon as possible, but you certainly need to wait until you have concrete plans. Once your travel plans are arranged, pinpoint your schools on a map and figure out which you can do together in a day, where you should stay, average travel times, etc. For example, if you fly into a city early in the morning, you could do an interview that afternoon and drive a few hours to get to another school for the next day. Once you have plans, call the school and find out their open spots, book whatever you can that lines up with your plans, and change plans if needed. </p>
<p>But you should do ^that as soon as possible as well.</p>
<p>I made mine last minute, which wasn’t smart because I could only book two. If you go to a private school, try going during a long weekend because it is when the school is in session. But if you need to go on like a weekend or a day when everyone has off, book it asap! If plans change, you can always have interviews change! Good luck!</p>
<p>In the summer months, you can get by with less notice, but out of courtesy I would still give a minimum of a day’s notice.</p>
<p>During admissions high-season (mid Oct to mid Jan) the visit calendar gets full quickly. </p>
<p>Thanks for all the help. I will HAVE to do my interviews in the summer. I could book them about two to three weeks in advance. I was worried that I needed to have them scheduled already! Thank you!</p>
<p>Note that not all schools have summer interviews.</p>
<p>For those I suppose I will have to do phone interviews/alumni interviews. For my top choices they have summer ones. I’m in the south east and I can’t make it in the fall so I will have to make do. </p>
<p>I would caution against doing summer interviews. The main reason is that the heavy interview season is between Mid Oct - early Dec. The bulk of the applicants will be interviewed during this time. Do you really want to be the first one to interview for your prospective class? Wouldn’t it be better to wait to be one of the later interviewees to make a better impression on the AO?</p>
<p>Because you may want to link the interviews (two on Friday, one on Saturday, for example around Boston), you need to contact the schools now and find out the date they open their fall schedules, then call on that date and you have a chance of being able to save multiple trips. The Saturdays go in about 2 hours.</p>
<p>However, even with that crazy level of advance planning, some schools we could NEVER get an interview (Choate) and just gave up after multiple tries and touring the campus ourselves. </p>
<p>@sgopal2 I don’t have the financial resources to take two trips to the north east a year… I’m already going to be i NY for a month this summer and my aunt will drive me to the schools. I’ve already worried about that. </p>
<p>@2prepmom I would be interviewing in August - should I start calling now?</p>
<p>Yes.</p>
<p>Call now.</p>
<p>Yes, as soon as you have firm schedule call. We scheduled all our interviews for November already.</p>