It looks as if we are roughly halfway through the invitation process. We will continue to issue invitations up to and including the notification date, which is January 16, 2008.

Why do the interview invitations slow down from this point on?

In the beginning of each round, all of our resources are deployed to reading applications. Once we begin the actual interviewing (interviews began on November 5) we cannot read at the same pace — hence the slowing down of the invitation rate.

To be clear, there is no order or pattern to which applications are read first.

We hope that bulletins like this are helpful and we sincerely appreciate your patience in this process.