Good points.

Guess I was envisioning a scenario where the would-be-imm had already gotten a tentative thumb's up on the possibility of joining the staff, and had gotten a tentative thumb's up on a very general idea for an area.

The kind of approval you'd get as a current heroimm before beginning to actually write room descriptions.

Once the person actually imm'd he'd just skip ahead to the point where someone would normally start reviewing his first draft.

All that would get cut out is the period where he's a heroimm, but still hasn't finished a first draft of his area. This seems like where most people fail. At least, it's where I failed. Having the draft ready beforehand would remove the possibility of washing out as a heroimm because one can't get motivated enough to finish his area.