Originally Posted by
themicah
My impression (correct me if I'm wrong) is that they had a huge backlog in 2019 that they've been steadily clearing out, but in early 2020 (maybe late 2019) they improved their capacity and started turning new applications around quickly, while still working on the backlog. The fact that they dropped all the NY applications and are no longer doing interviews is probably speeding things up even more now.
Is there anybody who had a super-fast approval in 2019? Anybody who is still waiting for a conditional approval who applied in 2020?
There were numerous fast approvals (~a week or less) throughout 2019 -- read the back pages of the thread, collecting data points is one of its purposes
Signs point to there being a fast queue and a slow queue (and the duration of the slow queue may have increased) but no real rhyme or reason as to which one you get assigned to. A variety of theories have been floated but I believe there have been counterexamples found for each one (and in any case there is always the risk of reporting bias in self-reported data points, people who post are more likely to have had slow experiences, etc.)
Whatever the criteria are, they're not simple and obvious. (Or at least, not in a way that's useful -- someone suggested that different locations might have different backlogs, which would be simple and obvious, but it's not clear there's any way to influence where your application is handled, e.g. I live near SFO/SJC and my conditional approval came from Williston, VT)