How to decide what schools to visit?

[faerare]

I apologize in advance if this sounds like bragging... it's an honest question and I would love to hear feedback from others.

 

I've heard back from a number of Ph.D. programs over the last week, and all of them want me to fly out to attend either an open house, interview, or accepted student day. Some are covering all of my expenses while others are offering a fixed amount of money to help with travel expenses.

 

Is it standard practice for an applicant to do all of these visits? There are some schools I know I will visit, but there are others I feel iffy about. I am finishing my last semester of undergrad and the thought of missing so many classes is tough to swallow. However, I don't want to feel like I missed out on an event that could have possibly swayed my final decision.

 

Any thoughts or suggestions?  

[TakeruK]

You don't have to do all of them. But it is expected for you to do some of them, especially the ones you are really excited about. It's a good way to start making some connections and recognizing a few faces before you start completely fresh next Fall! For me, I had 5 offers to visit but I had already knew what my top 3 choices were so I only visited those places. 

 

You should definitely any place that you might want to go to. But if you already know one or two schools are not likely going to be your final choice, then you might not want to visit. If the visits are far enough apart (my last visit offer was 1 month after my first visit), and I already knew that the 3 schools I visited early on were going to be one of my final 3 choices, so I was able to decline the visit and admission offer after seeing the first few schools and liking what I saw. 

 

Finally, although you want to be careful to not completely disregard your final classes, I think you can benefit a lot more from a visit than attending lectures in your current class. I probably would not visit more than 3-4 schools though! Also, you might be able to save time by combining visits from nearby schools. I asked one school to reschedule my visit to a different date so I could visit two schools in the same week (instead of having to go back home for 2 days before flying out again). This saved money for both me and the schools!

[iphi]

If you feel iffy about them, don't go. But try to make as many as you can, even if you have to reschedule some! Are you pretty confident about your chances at each one? That should certainly be a factor.

[Angua]

Yeah, my advice is to do as many as you can manage.  It will be over in a realtively short period of time (a few months, tops), but the decision of where to attend will have important ramifications for your life for a long time.  Plus, you will learn things at each visit that will help you better evaluate all of your options by showing you a broader universe of options. If you know there is nothing that could convince you to accept an offer, then don't waste everyone's time.  But if there's a chance, I say visit.

 

If general arguments aren't your style, here's some anecdata:

 

I declined 3 visits last year: one because I knew there wasn't anything the school could do to overcome the best offer I already had, one because the trip was too long/expensive for me to make (and the reimbursement wasn't going to cover it) AND I pretty much knew that the program couldn't compete, and the third because I wasn't enthusiastic about the program and the trip was just one too many psychologically for me.  Looking back on it, I wish I had visited at least the last one, although I'm happy with the way things turned out.

 

More relevantly, though, the school I ended up had the last visit date of all of my invites, which was quite late last year.  It was a somewhat unusual program relative to the others I applied to (i.e., related but different subfield), and I had already more or less settled on attending the first place I had visited.  If this school hadn't been a relatively easy trip logistically and somewhat separate psychologically from the others, I would probably have cancelled it -- and missed out on the place that turned out to be far an away the best fit for me.  So go to as many as you can!

Edited January 21, 2014 by Angua

[faerare]

Thanks for all your thoughts! I really appreciate it.

 

The other part of this that I should have posted is that I live on the west coast and almost all the schools I applied to are on the east coast. The schools that offered a fixed amount to cover travel do not fully cover my expenses. Hmm... so much to consider.

[TakeruK]

Thanks for all your thoughts! I really appreciate it.

 

The other part of this that I should have posted is that I live on the west coast and almost all the schools I applied to are on the east coast. The schools that offered a fixed amount to cover travel do not fully cover my expenses. Hmm... so much to consider.

 

I had a similar issue. I visited all of my west coast schools in one trip to save on expenses and I was able to just make it in within all the expense maximums. I was even living in a small town so I had there was an extra cost just to get to a hub airport. In order to make this work though, I had to reschedule some visits, so don't feel bad about asking schools (especially the ones with expense maximums) if you can visit on an alternate date in order to make it all in one trip.