Interviews: How do they finance?

[Langoustine]

Hey Grad Cafe collective! Just wondering when you get invited for an interview how do they work out the finances? Do they buy the plane tickets and you go? Do they look up an estimate for travel costs and give you money and you arrange everything yourself?

[newms]

From what I've seen at most places, they reimburse you up to a certain amount. So you'd have to buy the ticket and then they'd pay you back up to a certain amount (say $500). You can always ask the grad or department coordinator at the school you're interviewing about how they do it there.

Edited February 8, 2011 by newms

[jaxzwolf]

As far as I've heard, newms is right on. Typically if schools are reimbursing travel expenses you book your own flight and they'll pay you back up to a certain amount, depending on how far you're traveling (i.e. international interviewees will probably receive a greater allowance than those coming from the same time zone). Some schools ask you to keep an itemized list of travel expenses while you're visiting (meals not provided at the visitation, incidental expenditures, etc.) and will reimburse you for those costs, too.

My question would be, how do schools finances these visits? Where does the money to bring all these candidates to campus for a couple nights come from?

[NadaJ]

We actually work with the interviewee and purchase the plane ticket and make and pay for the hotel reservation. Meals are paid or supplied by the faculty/dept and they are reimbursed later. As our guest, they do not pay for hardly anything (that has to do with the interview and being on campus). We also arrange pick up and drop off from the airport.

[Social Psyc Researcher]

My partner and I have both applied to PhD programs in Psyc and none of our interview invites have been funded (at least not the travel expenses -- so far we have been responsible for travel costs and then been housed with current graduate students once we arrive).

[Eigen]

My visits were pretty much entirely arranged by the department- once we settled on a date, they booked my flight, my hotel, my transportation to and from the airport, and my meals while I was there- breakfast/lunch/dinner with either grad students or professors.

The one that was closer, I drove to- so they just did hotel/meals. It wasn't reimbursed, though- it was booked and directly paid for by the department.

[Langoustine]

Thanks guys, the reason I ask is bc I have an interview in Europe and I have family there I haven't seen in a long time and this would be a great chance to see them. They don't live in the country of the school though so if they reimburse me it would look weird if I requested to fly into a different city! Haha it would make the ticket cheaper though! Yes, I think I'll just wait and see what the grad office says and maybe I could work something out....:/

[Eigen]

Actually, I had a situation similar to that:

We wanted to stay around after the interview (it was our winter break) and have fun. The school payed the plane ticket (for me, not my wife) as normal, but just set the return trip later, when we wanted to fly out. They payed for the hotel for the interview (2 days), and we covered the rest.

They were quite helpful and accommodating. Let them invite you, and then mention that you would like to take the time to visit family while you are in the country, could your return trip perhaps be out of a different city? Or somesuch. Either that, or just move the dates so you can purchase your own flight from where you are to where your family is and back before you would need to leave.

[LJK]

I have an interview the weekend before my spring break then the following weekend have a conference in the city nearest to my parent's home. I checked with my POI (my only contact thus far at the school) if there would be any issue with my doing a multi-city trip current location-interview city, interview city-conference city. He said not at all and I should even check if adding a third flight conference city-current location would bring the price down, in which case I could reimburse the whole thing (this wasn't the case alas). I think it really depends on the school and their policies.

[Eigen]

I'm sure a lot of it also depends if this is post-acceptance interviews or pre-acceptance, but either way they do really want you to come (most of the time), and I find most schools to be pretty helpful.