Travel reimbursement - side trip?

[tangledc]

Phd interviews/visits are coming soon, and I wonder what is the policy for side visits? Say I have family in a different city nearby whom I can stay with for a few days before the interview. Would the school still reimburse me for my cost if I do so? Would it leave an negative impression on the school? If I were to do so, should I contact the school beforehand to let them know of my plans?

[TakeruK]

Yes, you should let them know beforehand and make sure it's okay. Otherwise when you submit receipts that don't match the dates they expect, it can cause problems with reimbursement or even delays.

That said, the typical policy is you will be reimbursed for the equivalent of the "main trip". This is the typical policy that most schools have but no guarantee that it's true for your case unless you ask. But it was the policy at my grad school and I made tons of side trips during conferences and it's also true for my current postdoc employer. Side trips are only appropriate when they do not interfere with the main purpose of the trip.

So, let's say you live in City A now, and the visit is to City B but you want to visit City C as well. Here are two possible "simple" ways to do it. 

If you decide to fly from A to C to visit family and then take a train/bus/flight to B for the school visit and fly home from B, then you will be reimbursed for the equivalent of a roundtrip flight from A to B. Usually the school will require you to get a printout / quote for a flight from A to B on the actual visit days and then you submit your actual travel receipts and they reimburse up to the cost of A to B. 

Or, you might decide to fly from A to B and arrange side transportation back and forth to C. This is easier since you will then just submit reimbursement for A to B and pay for the side trip to C out of pocket. Depending on the school policies, since you are arriving to B earlier to make the side trip to C, you might still be required to submit an "equivalent quote" for A to B on the exact dates of the visit, since flight costs may change based on which days you choose. 

In any case, you need to pay for any expenses (meals, incidentals) on the non-visit days yourself of course.

Finally, because this is a grad school visit instead of a work trip (e.g. a conference), you should be careful to not sound like you are only visiting their school because you want to do this side trip. Side trips are usually more appropriate when you are already attending a program, not when they are trying to recruit you (and although you didn't say, I assumed you are already accepted but if you are not accepted, I would advise against doing an extra trip since it could reflect poorly on you).

If you already have an offer from them, I would advise you to move your side trip to after the school visit and I suggest that you do something like fly from A to B, do your visit at B, then do your side visit to C, either flying home from C or go back to B. I think going back home from B makes more sense and then you just need to ask the school if you could book your flight home a few days later instead of right after the visit. You should say something like you want to see the area and for personal reasons (so that they don't think you're trying to visit another school since if you do that, you should split the cost between the two schools rather than make one school pay for all of it).