ThirtySthGang

I think there are two reasons. The first is that departments are generally pretty good at selling themselves, so whatever attractive aspects led to one applying to a school are magnified during the visits. The second is that putting an actual face to a name makes things more difficult. Meeting professors and graduate students at the programs makes the possibility of attending the schools feel real. Instead of abstract thoughts about taking classes and performing research, it becomes more realistic to imagine oneself there. Instead of just a name that you've emailed with or a campus seen through photo's, the visits humanize the process, at least for me.

She said Yes!!! She is Yale. Claiming an admit, slightly hysterically. 
Edit: notified by POI email. 

Things that I think prospective students who are visiting programs should avoid discussing:
- Starting arguments about politics or things not really relevant to the program (I see that you are in political science, so maybe some topics are more appropriate than others)
- Harassing other visiting students or current students
- Speak disparagingly or inappropriately about other students, faculty members, other schools you've visited, etc.
- Boast about your other accomplishments or other acceptances (for some reason, I seem to notice sometimes there are one or two prospective students are often trying to one-up the others)
- Go on and on about how much another place (whether it's another school you visited or your current school) is better than the school you're currently visiting
I hope the above is all common sense and falls under basic etiquette! 
There are also things that I think one should be careful while discussing but not necessarily avoid completely. It's a matter of discussing it in the right way or with the right person.
- Finances are okay to talk about but it is tricky and you have to find the right way to do it. I think it's more appropriate to discuss this with a current grad student than it is to discuss this with another prospective student. But you kind of have to judge it yourself: some people are going to be more comfortable discussing specifics than others. I think if you are comparing packages just to figure out if you have the best one or not, then that might make people uncomfortable (or if it seems like you are doing that). But if you are asking and discussing finances from the perspective of trying to figure out if you have enough to live on, then that's usually more acceptable. It might also be easier to have this discussion after the visit is nearly over and you have heard from people like the department head or the graduate coordinator. This is because these people might explain how the funding structure in the department works. For example, at my PhD school, it is very simple: everyone gets exactly the same stipend and funding package.
- Negative aspects of the program. It's important to learn about what makes people unhappy as well as what makes them happy. While I am always happy to be honest with visiting students because I want them to make the best choice for them, rather than just get them to come here, there are right ways to ask this as well as wrong ways! Sometimes people just point-blank ask me something like, "What is something you hate about your department?" and they won't get a useful answer out of me. Instead, I think it's better to talk to current students to get to know them first and they will usually share more as they get to know you. Also, if you have specific concerns, you can ask them a neutral question about the topic (e.g. instead of "Is the teaching load too high?" you can ask, "how do you find the teaching load? is it manageable?" etc.)
- Similarly, if you want to know about the bad attributes of various faculty members, don't ask it upfront. It's better to have these discussions privately with students since you will be more likely to get a sincere and useful answer if the student isn't worried that what they tell you will end up hurting them. So, they won't say the most candid things if they don't know you at all and maybe not while they are in the department / during the day (i.e. wait until the social events). Also, in the list of "don'ts" above, don't repeat what they said to other people or other schools. If students hear you telling people about all the negative things you learned about School X or Prof Y then they will correctly assume that you'll be just as indiscrete with the information they might provide you.
Overall, make sure you balance the tricky topics with things that are easier to talk about and leave a more positive impression of you. Try to keep the sensitive topics only to things that are critical to your decision making. This is going to be the first impression you leave on many other people and then they won't see you again for months, so if you leave a really bad impression, it has months for the impression to solidify in people's minds. So, stay professional, stay positive!

This is probably worth another thread rather than going here (one that can then be mocked on poliscirumors) but for my cents it's a great example of the internet's tendency to become a gross, mysoginistic sewer when left unattended...
Political science, like every other academic discipline, should be a welcoming, diverse community of people who love what they do, strive to do interesting, worthwhile things, and treat each other with respect and empathy. It should be a place that everyone on this board, and many more people who are not on this board, should be justifiably enthusiastic about committing a big part of their lives to for the best reasons... The opposite of that, that's PSR. 
 

I got into Maryland
Holy shit I thought I was going to strike out. I'm so freaking happy right now. I actually don't have to go back to Japan now to do PhD work.

They even staggering rejections now. The nerve of these people. 

Claiming the UNC admit from yesterday. I was assuming it to be a rejection but I guess they send decisions really slow. Until you receive the rejection letter, nothing is over ? 

Hey, I've learned that the adcomm will be making their final decision very soon. I assume it will be available early next week, which should mean they have not sent any acceptance/rejection yet.

So I think UW-Seattle is handling their admissions exactly the wrong way, whereas Michigan handled theirs exactly right. Michigan sent out their rejections and acceptances within 15 minutes of each other, so as soon as the decision was made, you knew. UW-Seattle more than likely has accepted their top choices to the program and are waiting to see how many accept/decline the offer while not rejecting anyone. More than likely 90+ precent of those who have not been offered admissions already will be rejected,  but they are waiting to send out a blanket rejection until they know that they have filled up the cohort, so even though most who have heard nothing have a 0 percent chance of getting into the University of Washington, we probably won't know that we've been rejected until like mid March. If you ask me, that isn't the way to treat people who applied to your program. I'm thankful that I don't care much about the outcome that much and can't imagine how much anxiety I would have if it were my top choice. I really don't think that style of admissions is fair to applicants.