politicsgirl

Thanks! I was really happy with how this cycle turned out for me considering I didn't have anyone advising me and I apparently did everything "wrong" according to the conventional wisdom. (I only applied to three schools, among other things...) And you're right, a personal visit almost certainly does have more weight than an email exchange, but at least in my case, none of the professors I contacted seemed to think I was a pest for my initial emails or wanting to sit down with them, which really you could argue was even more of an intrusion into their time than just exchanging a few emails. My guess would be that it probably does depend a lot on the professor. Dr. Athey is clearly not a fan! But I don't think that means it's always (or almost always) a bad idea.

I'm finally going to de-lurk because I want to address this topic. I think it goes to show that every department is different/there is no universal truth to the app process, but just as an anecdote... I actually went to visit two schools before submitting my applications. I sat down to meet with a few different professors at both schools and even sat in on a class. And those were the two schools I got into. Now, I will offer the caveat that I've been out of school for a long time and am a pretty untraditional applicant, but because I sat down and talked with my POIs, I made great connections with them that I was able to talk about in my SOP. And almost all of the professors I contacted were very responsive.