Tips for interview regarding financial aid

[gagga5]

I'm going to campus visit/interview at Georgia Tech tomorrow for PhD program in Mechanical Engineering (admitted).

When they noticed me about my acceptance, they invited me for campus visit (with full reimbursement) for three days and told me I need to find my prospective advisor for financial aid. They told me I will be interviewing with professors I requested and some professor who requested to meet me (However they won't give me this list until the day of my interview). Weird thing is they asked me not to contact them in advance, therefore my selection was purely based on their research website and few information about them that I heard from ME students at Gatech.

This will be my first time interviewing with graduate school faculties so I need some advice. I plan to prepare things about myself, research experience and little research about each professor. Would it be rude to ask them directly if they have funding?

Worst case scenario would be that all professors have no funding for next year and they won't give me RAship. Then I guess I'm going to have to talk to the department about getting some TAship.

Any comments about doing a good interview would be helpful (questions to ask/things to avoid/what are characteristics of good professor/funding and etc).

Edited March 17, 2010 by gagga5