What to expect on campus visits/interviews?

[AKGeo]

I've been invited out to 3/4  grad schools I've applied to for my masters, UT Austin, UCSB, and USC (S. Carolina).  I'm pretty nervous for all of these visits, and I'm wondering if I'm going to get grilled with questions.  What can I expect from these visits?  How close to being "in" am I?  Any tips for standing out in meetings with faculty and grad students?

 

 

[sjoh197]

I don't know about the interviews.... but I was at UCSB doing research in November.... and everybody there was sooooo incredibly nice, it was astonishing. It may ease your anxiety to know that. 

[GeoDUDE!]

I never  went for interivews, I went to post acceptance days. I met with a lot of people, and they of course, tried to intoxicate me at night. It was very casual and a lot of fun. Don't sweat it. Be yourself, and try and have fun.

[columbia09]

Does UT Austin evaluate candidates in some type of order ? Like are the one's that are hearing back now their top pick then they just go down the ladder ? 

[Usmivka]

I've been invited out to 3/4  grad schools I've applied to for my masters, UT Austin, UCSB, and USC (S. Carolina).  I'm pretty nervous for all of these visits, and I'm wondering if I'm going to get grilled with questions.  What can I expect from these visits?  How close to being "in" am I?  Any tips for standing out in meetings with faculty and grad students?

The most important part of interviews is to see how you'd fit within your lab and department (and for them to evaluate the same). That fit can make or break your time in grad school, so I'd focus on deciding whether these are people you'd enjoy working with and will foster your success, rather than trying to impress people with your scientific background or research ideas.

 

Does UT Austin evaluate candidates in some type of order ? Like are the one's that are hearing back now their top pick then they just go down the ladder ? 

There are some generic threads about this scattered around in the forum. Assuming the UTs work the same as the other similar research focused institutions I know something about, top picks hear back first, and most folks who are admissable but not top picks then get to wait for weeks (for horse-trading between profs that want a specific student) or months (for the first picks to decline and the university to move onto its backup list). Since first picks at one place are often top choices wherever they apply, that means a relative handful of people sit on most offers of admissions in a given field, while the majority of (eventually) attending students will have to wait a bit for the first draft to make up their minds.

Edited February 3, 2015 by Usmivka

[idiochromatic]

How "in" or not you are really depends on the school. For one school, I recieved a visit invitation along with my acceptance; for another I got a visit and am still waiting to hear back on the decision.

 

All my visits have been much more casual than I thought they would be. True to geological form, everybody has been dressed casually and not been formal in their questions. Mostly they have wanted to talk to me about my story and get a sense of my maturity/aptitude for rigorous graduate work rather than see proof that I have a fully articulated plan of attack for a PhD.

 

Worth emailing the current students of your POI to ask them how their visits were.