Visit a school before application?

[EvelynD]

I was wondering if it is normal for international students to visit universities in the States before they apply to a program. I am very interested in one specific uni, and since you commit for such a long period of time I would just hop on a plane and visit this school if it was ubicated in Europe. Since it would be very costly to fly to the States to check out schools I would máybe be able to do this once, but is this a normal thing? Or do you profile yourself enough by just contacting POI's and current students?

 

Thanks! 

[hippyscientist]

Hi! I actually did this. I flew from the UK to the US and visited my top 3 schools. I got acceptances from 2 and rejected from 1. While by no means necessary, I found it really helped me figure out where would be a good fit, local area etc, but I also found it helped the professors put a face to the name. If you can justify the expense, my personal opinion is that it's worth it for yourself. But if you can't justify it, I wouldn't worry. It's not going to be the thing that makes or breaks your application. Many professors I spoke to were more than happy to talk on Skype - and one even took a GoPro around campus to show it off to me!! So yeah - if you want to and can afford to, you're going to gain some valuable information by visiting. But if you can't afford it or whatever, don't feel like you're missing out or not giving your application its best shot - it's an expensive, stressful process so whatever you can do to reduce that pressure on yourself is worth it!

[fuzzylogician]

It's not commonly done but of course not impossible. What happens a lot more often is that you apply to schools that seem like a good fit on paper, and if/when you get admitted, they will often fly you out to visit some time before you make a decision about which school to attend (or: in some fields they have on-campus interviews for finalists). It could still be expensive (one school will usually not be able to cover the entire cost of the trip) but if you combine funding from several schools you could travel at no expense, and anyway it will be cheaper than going on your own. You will also get more attention and will be taken more seriously as an admitted student than as a random person who hasn't even applied yet. I can tell you personally that I am more inclined to share certain tidbits of information with people who it's relevant for (=admitted students who will work in a particular subfield or with a particular person).