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Suppose I've been accepted to work for a company. Selected candidates need to go though a one-month training period before they can do the job. If there is not enough selected candidates, there is no training sessions and available candidates have to wait untill there's enough people to be included in a wave or batch. Now if I want to ask my inteviewer to place me on the nearest wave or batch so I can get the training as soon as possible, what should I say? I have these in mind:

I'd appreciate it if you could place me on the nearest/closest/soonest/next wave.

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Of the options you have given, I think next works best:

I'd appreciate it if you could place me in the next wave.

You could also use an indefinite article if you phrased it something like this:

I'd appreciate it if you could place me in a wave as soon as possible.

I don't really think closest and nearest work all that well in this context, perhaps because it doesn't work well when talking about a wave or cohort. You could use close if you were talking about the date rather than the people in the class:

I'd appreciate it if you could get me into the wave that begins closest to my start date.
I'd appreciate it if you could get me into a wave that begins close to my start date.

Note that we use the definite article with the superlative because that refers specifically to one wave.

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  • "Next" is often ambiguous even to native speakers. "The next wave" could mean the one just starting, or the one after that, depending on context. If you want to be perfectly clear, then your other three examples (i.e. "as soon as possible") are better.
    – Andrew
    Commented Dec 8, 2017 at 21:03

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