smiley wrote:

Just going to chime in on this from over here at HCSSiM headquarters -- First of all, for those of you who applied, thanks for your interest and also mostly thank you for your patience as we review applications.

We were slightly surprised by the volume of very-last-day applications we got (we were expecting to get 150-ish and got about 250). We also have some temporary internal reductions in staff due to illness that means that our application processing time and email response time have both been slightly slower than usual (1-3 business days on emails instead of 1-2; about 20-22 days on applications instead of 17). Our decisions often don't come out linearly, but our records show that we've sent decisions to approximately everyone who submitted their ITs before April 17 (aside from a couple of people whose sponsor's letters or additional work came in later), and to many others who applied later than that. If you submitted your IT on the 25th, and haven't gotten a decision yet, you'll probably get it sometime late next week or early the week after. Earlier IT submissions will mostly get decisions within the next 1-3 business days.

If you have a conflicting deadline and need a response before May 17, please write to us and we'll do our best to accommodate, but if you do NOT have a conflicting deadline, please do not write to us — we're trying to get through admissions as quickly as possible which is very high workflow and more emails slows that down. You will get a decision if you submitted your IT, I promise. Last year, our very last batch of decisions went out on 5/21. We're doing our best to have it be comparable or earlier this year.

(Also yes you can still submit additional work, basically until you receive your decision, but know that it'll probably mean you have a little longer to wait before you get your decision letter.)

So sorry to hear about the staff's illness. Hope the staff gets better!