Interview Offer Summary

The synchronized interview process occurs each year on Friday through Monday.
For the exact dates, please review the detailed match timeline.

The core principle of the simultaneous offers is that there is a guaranteed spot for every applicant on the date they are being offered an interview. An applicant must be offered an interview date. If programs have multiple interview dates, then they must divide their list and offer date-specific invitations. If programs choose to give an applicant the option of multiple dates, then they must honor and accommodate all the accepted interviews for any specific date.

The idea is not that applicants are able to interview at all the places they are invited to, but rather they choose up-front the programs in which they are genuinely interested and attend those interviews. They decline the interviews they don’t want immediately so that other students who are interested in that program may take the interview spot.

Flush Day

The Tuesday after the synchronized interview process, Applicants will be able to adjust their interview selections and schedules to finalize and irreversibly lock-in accepted interviews.

Once programs have received acceptance and declinations on Monday, they can communicate with applicants to offer interviews from their wait list. If you get an offer for an interview from a program where you were initially on the wait list, you can accept this interview and cancel an already accepted interview from your initial offers. You can only shuffle on FLUSH day and “flush” out your schedule. After Tuesday, you are not allowed to cancel already accepted interviews. You can accept other interview offers that do not conflict but YOU MAY NOT CANCEL already accepted interviews.

Programs

• Programs must create three lists: initial acceptances, waitlist, and rejections.
• The notifications of initial acceptances, waitlist notices, and rejections are sent to applicants on Friday. Rejection letters as well as waitlist letters must also be sent on this date; there was confusion last year on this point.
  Programs will offer applicants a spot on one specific interview date. If programs choose to give an applicant the option of multiple dates, then programs must honor and accommodate all the accepted interviews for any specific date. Programs may offer the applicant a wait list spot on an alternate date if the applicant cannot accept the date in their original invitation.
• Example acceptance: “Dear Ms. X we are delighted to offer you an interview on Dec 4th. Please confirm if you are available on this date. We are also holding interviews on Dec 10th and are happy to put you on a waitlist for this date if you can’t attend on Dec 4th. We can’t guarantee an interview on Dec 10th, but we are happy to confirm for you on Dec 4th.”
• Example waitlist: “Dear Ms. X we would like to offer you a spot on our wait list this year. We will contact you after Oct 25^th if we are able to offer you an interview.
• Example rejection: “Dear Ms. X we are very sorry but we will not be able to offer you an interview this year.”

Applicants

• Applicants will review their invitations, waitlists, and rejections during the designated interview weekend.
• On Monday, applicants will reply to their invites and either accept them, choose to be waitlisted for an alternate date, or decline the invitation.
• All applicants must reply to the offers on Monday. If applicants do not reply to an invitation by that time, then the applicant is no longer guaranteed the interview on that date.

Acceptances: If you are accepted by a program, want that interview, and the date works for you then you accept the interview. You are then guaranteed that interview on that date. If you want the interview but the date does not work, you may request to be on the program’s wait list for an alternate date. If you do not want the interview then you decline the interview. Note: this communication occurs on Monday and not prior.

• Example acceptance: “Dear program Y. Thank you for your offer. I would like to confirm my interview with you on Dec 4th.”
• Example decline: “Dear program Y. Thank you very much for your offer but I am regretfully declining.”
• Example request alternate date: “Dear program Y. Thank you for your offer but I unfortunately can’t attend on Dec 4th. Please put me on your waitlist for Dec 10^th.”

Wait list: if you are on a program’s waitlist, you do nothing and wait to hear back from them on or after Monday.

Rejection: if you are on a program’s rejection list, you take them off your list. Do nothing.

There are different ways a program may choose to fill their interview dates but the one unifying rule is that programs must offer specific dates and honor those dates.

How is this supposed to work?

Because applicants will get all of their offers on the same day, they will be able to choose and accept their most desirable interviews on Monday and lock these in. They will also be forced to not accept all interviews due to the inherent date conflicts which happen every year. The intention of this process is not to allow applicants to attend every interview offer. The intention is to allow applicants to see all of their initial offers at once and schedule their interview season by choosing their most desirable interviews of the ones they are offered. Applicants are forced to decline the interviews they really don’t want and this allows other applicants (on the waitlist) to get interviews at these programs and potentially match. This advantages the applicants rather than the programs.

In the past with the fluid interview offer/decline process, it was common for applicants to decline interviews a few days before or even the night before an interview which made it impossible for programs to backfill from the waitlist. This disadvantaged applicants who were on the waitlist but didn’t get the opportunity to interview at a program they found desirable because other applicants cancelled too late for backfill to occur in a timely fashion. We hope this year’s process will avoid this.

This year, we are piloting Flush Day which will be Tuesday. On this date and only on this date, applicants will be able to cancel previously accepted interview invitations in order to accommodate invitations off a waitlist. Applicants will be able to adjust their interview selections and schedules to finalize and irreversibly lock-in accepted interviews. Applicants may not cancel an interview after Flush Day.

More about the waitlist:

Once the programs receive their acceptances, they will begin to backfill from their waitlist. This process will start on Monday. Applicants will be allowed to shuffle their schedules on Flush Day as programs offer interviews from their wait lists. Programs will first backfill from the waitlist of initial acceptances (applicants who want to interview but wanted an alternate date). Once they reach the end of this initial acceptance waitlist, a program may then offer to their waitlist applicants (who did not receive an initial offer).

After Flush Day, programs may continue to offer interview from their wait lists for any remaining slots. BUT applicants may not cancel any interviews they have already accepted – either from initial offers or wait list offers. Applicants may accept new offers after Flush Day as long as they don’t conflict with already accepted offers.

Who is going to police this process?

Any irregularities on the part of the program or the applicant will be investigated and may constitute a “Match Violation.”

This process is based on the honor system and the increasing transparency of the process through social media. If someone becomes aware that a program is not following the rules, please tell the SAU and we will reach out. We will also ask programs to keep a list of students who initially accept interviews and later decline them (interview hoarding) and send this list to the SAU. The SAU will then reach out to the student’s home Department or Division of Urology as well as the Dean’s office at their medical school.