Fully paid visit to campus

[GaryTheSnail]

Hello everyone,

I am an European student and a good canadian university offered me a campus visit. They have not accepted me yet into their PhD program and want me to be further interviewed by my first-choice professor and interviewed by a second one.

This first professor invited me to fly down to their university and say they will cover all travel-related costs. I asked if housing was included and where I should book for it (on campus or in town); he just said that he can book the hotel for me once I give him my arrival / departure dates.

1 - Do you think that he implied the university will pay for the hotel as well?

2 - The travel will cost me almost 1000 euros / 1500 $. I asked if I had to keep the bill to get my money back later, he just answered "yes". Is that a typical procedure? Don't I need any formal administrative agreement first? How can I be sure that I will have my money back? Does anyone ever experienced any problem with this kind of situation?

Thank you in advance!

[liszt85]

Hello everyone,

I am an European student and a good canadian university offered me a campus visit. They have not accepted me yet into their PhD program and want me to be further interviewed by my first-choice professor and interviewed by a second one.

This first professor invited me to fly down to their university and say they will cover all travel-related costs. I asked if housing was included and where I should book for it (on campus or in town); he just said that he can book the hotel for me once I give him my arrival / departure dates.

1 - Do you think that he implied the university will pay for the hotel as well?

2 - The travel will cost me almost 1000 euros / 1500 $. I asked if I had to keep the bill to get my money back later, he just answered "yes". Is that a typical procedure? Don't I need any formal administrative agreement first? How can I be sure that I will have my money back? Does anyone ever experienced any problem with this kind of situation?

Thank you in advance!

I'm a first year grad student and we had the visitation weekend for our program this week. I heard that its common to reimburse your flight tickets. So you will probably get your money back via a reimbursement. As for the hotel thing, it seems to me that he implied that he would pay for it. You never really have a written agreement for this sort of thing. The email should be good enough. I went on an internship to Europe (all the way from India) on such an agreement. I was reimbursed every penny. I guess you should just trust them when they say they will reimburse you the money.

[fuzzylogician]

I was reimbursed by 4 different schools, so that they split the cost of my trip between them. The biggest expense was the flights/buses, I always stayed with graduate students so there was no hotel to pay for. All the schools wanted me to pay first and present them with receipts later. While visiting each place, there was time allotted to travel reimbursement. An administrator in charge of finances would come by, make a copy of my passport, ticket stubs and (in some cases) receipts, and that was it. I got checks in the mail approximately 4-6 weeks after the visits. There was never a binding agreement, but in all of the cases, once they said they would fund me there was no problem.

[GaryTheSnail]

I was reimbursed by 4 different schools, so that they split the cost of my trip between them. The biggest expense was the flights/buses, I always stayed with graduate students so there was no hotel to pay for. All the schools wanted me to pay first and present them with receipts later. While visiting each place, there was time allotted to travel reimbursement. An administrator in charge of finances would come by, make a copy of my passport, ticket stubs and (in some cases) receipts, and that was it. I got checks in the mail approximately 4-6 weeks after the visits. There was never a binding agreement, but in all of the cases, once they said they would fund me there was no problem.

[GaryTheSnail]

OK. Thank you, I feel relieved.

[twocosmicfish]

They will reimburse you - no school wants a reputation for stiffing potential grad students.

[rising_star]

+1 to what twocomicfish said. I never had a problem with schools reimbursing me for flights.

[socialpsych]

Yes, they will reimburse you, as others have said.

About the hotel: it sounds to me like the school will be paying, but it doesn't hurt to ask the prof just to make sure you're absolutely clear.