Social Sciences Graduate Study Visit/Interview

[UrbanWonk]

So, I'm the first in my family to be interested in the social sciences, and my undergrad school hasn't provided a lot of support in what to expect (we're a jobs-focused university). Can someone walk me through what both a visit (as a prospective grad student) and interview (as an admitted grad student) would look like? I've watched friends in the hard sciences be wined and dined, but I've heard things vary considerably for social sciences. If it matters, I'm applying to a few MPA/MPP/MUP programs and a few Econ PhD programs.

Thanks!

[eucalyptus]

So, I'm the first in my family to be interested in the social sciences, and my undergrad school hasn't provided a lot of support in what to expect (we're a jobs-focused university). Can someone walk me through what both a visit (as a prospective grad student) and interview (as an admitted grad student) would look like? I've watched friends in the hard sciences be wined and dined, but I've heard things vary considerably for social sciences. If it matters, I'm applying to a few MPA/MPP/MUP programs and a few Econ PhD programs.

Thanks!

Not sure how relevant this will be (I applied for Psychology PhDs), but about my first interview experience last year. This interview was after I'd applied, but before I'd been admitted (they interviewed a shortlist of applicants).

I went to four interviews last year, each of which felt like it was at a different point on the interview spectrum; some were closer to classic interviews where they're trying to decide if they want you, some felt more like they were trying to impress you/convince you go there, but all truly fell somewhere in between. Three of them involved crashing with a current grad student, while the other was more hard-science-like in that they put me up at a nice hotel. All of them had portions where you had to dress nice and talk intelligently about your research, and all involved some amount of wining and dining. Hope this helps!