Prospective Student Weekend Terror

[zaza_pachulia]

I was invited to a prospective student weekend - they're paying for me to come out and I was very excited about the whole thing - until I received the schedule. I'm meeting with my potential advisor obviously, but also separately with six other faculty members! Is this standard fare? It's seems like overkill to me, not to mention incredibly terrifying. Has anyone else been to one of these? What are they like? I think I'm too nervous to go!

[owlettkh]

I have been to 2 of these already. Meeting with 5 or 6 faculty is really the norm. You don't just meet with your POI because the faculty want to get a feel for you from different people's perspectives and its good for you because you get a lot of perspectives about the program. These meetings may seem kind of scary, but they really arent. The faculty like you and want to get to know you, you wouldn't be there if they didn't. They don't try to stump you with their questions. They typically ask what your research interests are, what you've done, why their institution, etc. They will also give you the opportunity to ask them questions both about their research and the program.

Don't stress...do look into the research of the people you are meeting with, but dont worry too much about it. You will do fine.

Good Luck!

[crustaceangirl]

I just came back from one of these weekends, and they'd scheduled me to meet six faculty. Several were ones I was interested in working with, so I read the most recent publication from each of their labs. The others I was just like, "Oh, they must be on the adcom" so I didn't study their research in detail (just read the little biosketch on each of their websites to get a really general idea of what they do).

Try not to freak out too much. This is a good thing, a way for them to get to know you and how awesome you are, not a time for them to scare you with really hard questions. Prepare to answer things like "Why do you want to study [whatever field]?" and "What made you apply to our program?" as well as to talk about stuff on your CV, your experience. They'll probably also give you a brief research spiel where you can ask questions about their work. If the prof has a nice personality, these can actually be very fun meetings.