Visit weekends can be exciting and the most fun part of the application process. This is your reward for putting in all that work in the fall semester and a great opportunity to meet new people and build your network. Visit weekends occur generally between February and April. Typically, these visits start Thursday evening with a dinner, on Friday you will have appointments to meet with faculty and a tour of the campus, Saturday will be an excursion of the surrounding area, and it will end on Sunday with breakfast/brunch. Not all universities follow this schedule, but it is pretty typical of most visits.
On each visit, the university will host admitted applicants for a weekend to introduce their program and try to convince you to accept their offer. Let yourself be wooed: attend the fancy dinners, talk with current graduate students, meet and get to know the faculty you wrote about in your personal statement – even if you don’t accept their offer, this is a great networking opportunity. The graduate students and departments typically go all out to try to leave you with a good impression of their institution – soak it all up.
Faculty meetings are your opportunity to get to know your potential future advisor. This is one of the most valuable parts of visit weekends – you get to pick the brains of some of the smartest people in your field. Meet with as many faculty as you can, even if their research isn’t aligned with your interests it is still a great opportunity to learn about the program and the area. Ask blunt questions about their funding: how many students are they seeking?; what specific projects are available?; what are their expectations of their students? Ask about the group culture: how often do they meet with students?; are there group outings?; is there opportunity to collaborate with other groups in the same or different university? These meetings are where you get to look behind the curtain and see how things are done in different groups.
There will often be a graduate student panel during the visit where it will just be the panel and the prospective students in the room. This is a great opportunity to learn more about the campus culture and to spot potential red flags in the program. Be sure to seize opportunities to ask graduate students about their group and their program when one-on-one circumstances present themselves, such as during the Saturday excursions or dinner.
Another great opportunity about visit weekends is meeting potential students in your cohort. This will give you a good idea of the type of people that will be in class with you at the program, and a group of friends that you will see at conferences in the future even if you don’t end up at the same school. Try to break out of your shell and get to know as many fellow prospectives on your trips as possible.
A fair warning: These weekends are jam packed with events and can be exhausting on top of trying to keep up with school work. Three-four visit weekends is a very manageable number, and five-six is doable while maintaining your studies. Many programs will offer a choice between two visit weekends for you to choose between that works best with your schedule, but some programs will only offer one weekend. In these cases, some visit weekends may overlap and you will have to choose which weekend to attend. Do not accept a visit weekend hastily, the program will typically give you a few weeks to RSVP. Because acceptances happen on different timelines depending on the school, you may get another offer a couple weeks later that you prefer over a previous offer, so try to keep your schedule open so you can attend your top choice programs.
Journey to Grad School 