They've tried things like giving econ applicants a limited number of signals that can be sent to employers to indicate especially strong interest and letting both sides ordinally rank their top 10 preferred match partners.
Introducing prices somewhere in there could help with the volume problem, maybe even some sort of auction mechanism.
Maybe things are moving earlier because on the job-seeker side, it's what they feel like they have to do to stand out from the crowd.
There's also filtering value, for both sides, in getting the interns in-house earlier.
That's my sense, on both counts.
They've tried things like giving econ applicants a limited number of signals that can be sent to employers to indicate especially strong interest and letting both sides ordinally rank their top 10 preferred match partners.
Introducing prices somewhere in there could help with the volume problem, maybe even some sort of auction mechanism.
There's also filtering value, for both sides, in getting the interns in-house earlier.