Potentially sill question on the cost of visits

[rainy_day]

If you get into a school and are invited to an accepted students weekend, do programs (especially humanities) do anything to help defray the cost of travel or help you find a place to stay?

[Sparky]

For PhD programs, I think it's sort of typical for the visitor to pay upfront and then get reimbursement from the school up to a certain amount. Also (for U.S. schools) whether you would be flying from overseas or not. Like everything else, it probably depends a significant amount on the particular school in question.

As far as accomodations goes, it varies pretty widely *where* you stay (students' couches, on-campus hotel, hotel way the heck away from campus with provided shuttle, etc--and those are all examples from just my university). If the dept does not arrange sleeping space, however, the dept admin assistant would almost certainly help you out.

My own school actually does interview weekends for most of the departments instead of a post-acceptance visit (rare for humanities, but there are a few holdouts). All that is of course paid for upfront by the school. The programs here that don't have an interview pay for travel to and from campus, and for a hotel room, but I don't know if those students pay and then get reimbursed or if the school just covers it.

[fuzzylogician]

Like Sparky says, it depends on the school and can vary a lot. In case it helps, for the schools I visited, some didn't reimburse at all but most did, with amounts ranging from $300 to $550 per school. Since I combined all my visits to one trip, I ended up getting reimbursed for pretty much all of my travel (one transatlantic flight, two domestic flights, one bus ride). The schools would send checks, usually several weeks after I returned, after I sent them original receipts and tickets. All the departments made arrangements for me to sleep in current students' apartments and they took care of food, so mostly I didn't have any expenses from that trip.

[Eigen]

The schools I visited, they made and paid for my hotel reservations for the length of time I'd be there. For one school, they were quite helpful about getting me a good rate to stay a couple of extra days to explore the area- the school paid for 3 nights, I paid for the rest out of pocket.

For flights, the schools reimbursed me up to a certain amount (it was $500 for two of the schools I visited, iirc).

Meals were primarily done as interviews/visits, either with faculty or graduate students. This took care of all three meals most of the days I was there.

The exact costs are going to depend on the program, as others have mentioned.

[wildviolet]

One school offered me at least $800 (possibly more) to visit their campus this winter.

[ktel]

I only went to one interview weekend, and everything was paid for (flights, hotel, cabs, meals). However, sending in all the appropriate receipts and getting reimbursed became quite a headache when they misplaced all of my receipts that I had sent.

[rising_star]

I only went to one interview weekend, and everything was paid for (flights, hotel, cabs, meals). However, sending in all the appropriate receipts and getting reimbursed became quite a headache when they misplaced all of my receipts that I had sent.

Note: This is a great place to use your scanner. I try to scan all receipts I have to send in for reimbursement so that if they do get lost, I can still submit a version of them.

[ktel]

Note: This is a great place to use your scanner. I try to scan all receipts I have to send in for reimbursement so that if they do get lost, I can still submit a version of them.

Yup I did scan all of them, but scanned copies were "Absolutely not acceptable" to the university. I had originally e-mailed them scanned copies and they were adamant that I send the originals. The confusion came when for some stupid reason one of the admin staff printed off my scans and then they decided that I had mailed them photocopies. I kept phoning this one woman, who was supposed to be in charge of reimbursing me, but obviously wasn't, because my cheque came as I was dealing with her and she had no idea about it.

[Eigen]

Yeah, scanning is nice, but my University won't accept scanned copies. I got a wallet that has two "cash" sections, and use one for receipts and the other for cash.

[rising_star]

My university says they won't accept scanned copies. But, they did once when the originals went missing and no one could find them. In that case, they made an exception and the scans were the only reason I got my money back. Otherwise, I would've been SOL. FWIW, this is the same reason that the admin people in my department photocopy professors' receipts before submitting them for reimbursement. Things get lost in campus mail and, if/when that happens, you're SOL if you can't produce another receipt. Depending on what the receipt is for, you might be able to get a copy from the vendor though.

[Eigen]

We have to fill out several additional forms if we want to use scanned receipts- they go under the category of lost receipts affidavits.

For us, we can copy/scan the reimbursement application as a whole, and use that in case the original is lost, but that's a different process than not having the receipts originally, strangely enough.