Buy plane tickets?

From my recollection, most of the major airlines don't jack their fares until about 2 weeks prior to the flight. However, by this point you may get screwed into an inconvenient itinerary: this is the most-lethal complication of air travel for interviews, for if you have this trip back-to-back with another, and you get screwed out of the latter because of poor planning, then you'll be faced with having to possibly cancel one of them. And, since it is a recurrent theme here that "more interviews tends to be a better idea for matching", it would seem that you should try and maximize your logistics for travel.

So, all things being equal, if you'd even consider working for your fly-a-way institution, go ahead and book your tickets for a schedule you like. You may ultimately have to shift the closer interviews around, but you can do this.

the strategy I am employing is to book one way ticekts. For example, if I know that I am going to be in City A on Thursday, but still have friday and saturday open, I am just booking the flight to City A. When I schedule an interview for friday, i'll book the leg to City B.

I only get screwed if I have to cancel an interview for a new one, but I hope I can go to every offer i get!

Honestly, the best thing you can do is book as many of your flights as you can through Southwest. When I interviewed I flew Southwest as much as possible, even if the ticket was slightly more expensive than another carrier. The reason - you can cancel/change your ticket almost right up until the time of your flight at no cost.

This has several advantages. In addition to being able to change one or multiple legs of a trip at no cost, you save tons of money in the long run compared to having to change flights on other airlines that charge a large fee for each change/cancellation. I switched 10-20 flights around throughout interview season, and this not only saved me money but it also allowed me to plan the optimal scheduled to attend almost every single one of my interviews that I was offered (20+) with minimal delays/layovers/extra stops.

Finally, there are always unexpected events that may come up that might necessitate a change in itinerary. On one of my interviews, I flew in to a nearby international airport, rented a car, and drove about an hour and a half to the program. The morning after my interview I was scheduled to fly out around 9am. I woke up and found 15 or so inches of new snow on the ground that fell overnight and buried my tiny "economy" rental car. I called Southwest, changed my flight to the 3pm departure later that afternoon knowing there was no way I would make it back to the airport anytime before noon. After digging my car out of the snow (in dress clothes meant for another pre-interview dinner I was headed to later that night) I then drove at maybe 20-30 mph back through the arctic tundra avoiding the insane semi-truck drivers who wouldnt let near blizzard conditions slow them from their minimum speed of 65 and was able to make my departing flight. I not only made my interview the next day, I also made the dinner that night.

How early before the social are you guys arriving? Would you rather be there the day before? I'm finding that as I am scheduling my plane tickets, I am having to fly in either the morning of or 3 hours before the night before social begins. i'm not sure if this is pushing it and whethe rI should be trying to fly in 2 days before.

I haven't scheduled any trips yet but I plan on arriving in the morning. That way if there are flight delays I might still make it. I think arriving 2 days before may be overkill and adding to the hotel expense. Unless you are interviewing somewhere awesome and you want to do something fun in the area. Miami might not be too bad this time of year.