NAD CI portfolio submission — how long is the review actually taking right now?
I submitted my NAD Certified Interpreter portfolio about 11 weeks ago and I'm starting to get anxious. The website says to allow 8–12 weeks for review but I've heard from a few people that it's been running closer to 16 weeks lately. Has anyone submitted recently and gotten a response within the standard window, or is a delay basically normal right now?
For context, I've been interpreting for about 6 years, primarily in community and educational settings. I'm applying at the NAD IV level, which I know is a significant jump. My video samples covered a medical intake scenario and a parent-teacher conference, both around 15 minutes each. I felt okay about my performance but it's hard to self-assess accurately on something like this.
I'm also trying to figure out whether I should be preparing anything for the possibility of an appeal if the initial result isn't what I'm hoping for. Does the NAD feedback give you enough specific information to know what to work on, or is it pretty vague?
If you don't pass on the first submission you can resubmit after 6 months. I know that's not what you want to hear but a lot of people reach their target level on the second try after targeted mentorship work between submissions.
The feedback does name specific areas — things like prosody, message equivalence, or register matching — but it's not a detailed rubric with numerical scores. It's enough to guide what you work on but you may need a mentor to interpret what it means for your specific samples.
NAD IV is a solid target with 6 years of community experience. Medical and educational samples are good choices. One thing reviewers apparently look for is naturalistic ASL rather than signed English — if your educational setting work skews toward SimCom that could be a factor worth thinking about.
I submitted in January and got my results at 14 weeks, so the delays are real. NAD evaluators are working through a backlog. The 8–12 week estimate on their site hasn't been accurate for a while based on what I've seen in our local RID chapter discussions.
I submitted mine about 9 weeks ago so I'm in the same boat as you. From what I've heard from my cohort, 16 weeks is unfortunately pretty common right now, so I've mentally adjusted my expectations and stopped refreshing my email every hour. Honestly it's freed me up to actually keep studying instead of just waiting.
I've been drilling through nad/questions/educational interpreting settings this past week and just hit an 81% on my practice run, which felt good enough that I'm planning to book my performance exam for late September whether or not the portfolio decision is back by then. Might as well stay sharp. Fingers crossed for both of us.
I just got my approval letter two weeks ago after submitting in early March, so about 13 weeks total for me. Honestly the waiting was the worst part. The one thing that I think actually made a difference was being really specific in my self-reflection statements — I didn't just describe what happened in the video, I explained why I made each interpreting decision and what I'd do differently. My portfolio advisor mentioned that reviewers are looking for that metacognitive piece and a lot of submissions fall short there.
So if you haven't gotten feedback yet at 11 weeks you're probably still within the normal window, even if it doesn't feel that way. Hang in there. It's brutal but the process does move.