Applications have been submitted. Received an invite for a two-day visit/campus tour/meeting with faculty at one of the top grad schools on my list. The school is providing airfare, transfers, hotel, and meals. The current grad students are also presenting a “research expo” on their current work. Is this common for the grad school admissions process? Is it a good sign? Said yes and will go, but this is all new to me and was wondering. Thanks!
Sounds like you are one of their top candidates. They would not pay for all of their applicants to do this. I would approach it as an informal interview process, even if they don’t say you have a formal interview while you’re there. They will be determining your fit for the program, and you should be doing the same. Talk to current students and have questions prepared for them and the faculty. Good luck!
It’s pretty common to do events like these, and they typically only invite their top candidates to attend them. It’s their attempt to get you on campus and woo you into attending there, especially since they likely assume you will have other attractive admissions offers elsewhere and they need to compete for you.
D’s invites to visit came after acceptance, because each school assumed [correctly] that she would be evaluating different offers. I would still call it a definite good sign.
It also signals that the department has money. That is a good thing, too.
Thanks all!
Treat it like an interview, even if there are no formal interviews scheduled. They do consider you a top candidate, but they may be evaluating more candidates than they can reasonably admit to decide who they actually want to admit to the program.
So yes, it is a good sign! But the process is not over yet 
Thanks again all for the input. As an update, had a second paid school visit last month, got two offers, and decided to accept an offer of admission as a PhD candidate at Purdue’s Earth Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences Department, with a tuition scholarship, an RA position, and a stipend. @juillet - there were 4 to 6 half-hour interviews with department professors at each school (the other was UIC), so it was more like a job interview, but everybody was very cordial and friendly. So advice for those reading this in the future – know who you are interviewing with, find out what research they are doing (you probably should know this anyway before you apply to see if you are a good "fit), be prepared to discuss what you have done and want to do, and treat it like a job interview and not like an undergrad “new students” weekend.
Congrats and thanks for coming back to share!
Wonderful news and very good advice.
@drwtaww - Congratulations! My son is a junior aerospace engineering major at Texas A&M. He is evaluating his PhD interests. Planetary Science is a big interest of his (he put together a Mars climate model). He also likes chemical rocket propulsion. Both of these programs are outstanding at Purdue. We have now visited there twice, once when he was in high school, and again two months ago.
Ultimately, he has decided to study plasma/ion propulsion, which is not a Purdue strength, so he will likely end up at Michigan or Georgia Tech if he gets all the requirements together between now and December applications. But we both love Purdue.
What college are you at now and what’s your major?
Good fortune to you!
Spot on.
My D interviewed at ~7 Unis, all of which were all expenses paid. If I recall, she said that they typically had 1.5-2x of the number of interviewees than they had spots to offer/fund. Thus, achieving the on-campus interview increased the odds to 50%. Much better than <10% for many PhD programs, but still no slam dunk. (apologies to March Madness!)
So yeah, it ain’t over.