International student - visit

[Flior]

What about visits for international students? Who will pay the travel from Europe/Asia/... to the United States or anywhere?

[FinallyAccepted]

Depends on your program and depends on your school. Schools may help you foot the bill for an in-person interview, and some may not. Hopefully they would be understanding about the difficulty of purchasing international tickets if they don't help you pay for it.

 

Have you already been invited? They should provide that kind of info when they invite you.

[TakeruK]

For some schools, you might be able to get a partial reimbursement. For example, they might be willing to pay up to say, $400, for a flight. If you have enough schools that are close enough together and each is willing to pay $400, you might be able to make a trip work out!

[Chubberubber]

TakeruK's idea is very good. However, it's not always an option...

 

In my case, the school was willing to pay for domestic travel but not for international flights. Also, it seems like they were booking the flights for applicants (l know it's quite common) so pulling together resources from several universities wouldn't have been an option... In fact, I was encouraged by my POI to not come to the interview weekend if it means paying anything out of pocket and I was assured it would not effect my chances. 

Instead, we had a nice Skype interview. In some ways, being interviewed via Skype was possibly even better for me because I was more relaxed (doing the interview in my own living-room), could prepare better, and didn't have jet lag to deal with! 

Edited January 21, 2015 by Chubberubber