Grad school visit days

[coffeegirl]

Can anyone give me some more insight on visit days and what all purposes they have? I've applied to quite a few grad schools for a phd in civil engineering and am waiting on all the results.

Are visit days really important for getting accepted/funded?

Kinda concerned because some of the school I have heard back from have visit days during weekdays. I have class that drops a letter grade for every absence and they won't excuse these grad visit days. A lot of the visit days are 2-3 days, would it be bad to go to them only 1 or 2 of the days? Almost every school I applied to is flying distance away so that kinda complicates my scheduling too blah

[fuzzylogician]

- Visits are usually pretty important both for you and for the school to get an impression of each other. 

- Most schools will pay for the cost of the flight and accommodations, otherwise I think it's fair to tell them you can't afford the cost. 

- If you can't make it, you can ask for a Skype conversation instead. It's not quite the same, but it's better than nothing. 

- You can usually ask to reschedule and/or only be there for part of the visit if you really need to.

Since we're talking about an important life decision here, I'm not sure that a grade is one class is worth missing out on crucial information or opportunities. If it were me, I'd see about extra credit or some attendance exemption if possible, or I might accept a somewhat lower grade, but that's just me. 

[TakeruK]

Agree with everything @fuzzylogician said. In addition, the reason why they are on weekdays is because you want to be visiting on a "typical day" at the department. You want to see professors while they are at work to meet with them, see students in their offices. Sometimes you attend classes or seminars at the school. If you went on a weekend, then there would be no one there! Sometimes they overlap with a weekend so that you have one day for on-campus info stuff and one day for social activities that the grad students organize. Usually they are 2 full weekdays though.

I think it makes sense for classes to require attendance, but to not make allowances for students in their final semester to attend grad school visits is a harmful policy. If I was in the situation, I would either drop the class or take the lower grade. It is far more important for your future to attend these visits than it is to have this class. For me, these visits provided the critical information I needed to make the right grad school decision.

That said, if you end up with 5 or more visit offers, you don't have to attend them all! I narrowed down my top 3 choices and only attended those. I was in a Masters program at the time so I couldn't take too much time off my work schedule.