<p>I have heard from multiple professors that many universities will pay for a student to fly to the campus and visit. I was wondering how this is generally done and how a prospective graduate student interested in a university could contact the school for such a trip. Should a specific professor be contacted? Or the department, college, graduate school, or university? Are these only reserved for the very top students? Is it usually a one time thing or do schools sometimes offer multiple trips? Are they usually mid week or at the end of the week such as on a Friday?</p>
<p>I don’t know about pre-admissions, but all my acceptance letters also had an offer to come visit the school on the department’s dime. Caltech was the only one that offered before decisions, but I think they wanted an informal interview during the visit. The offers I got were end of week through the weekend type of things, starting Thursday or Friday and ending on Sunday.</p>
<p>Again, these were for admitted students. It’s hard to imagine the school paying to fly a non-admitted student unless he or she is already at the top of their list.</p>
<p>It depends on the field. In math and computer science, many programs will subsidize a visit after you get accepted. A friend of mine was applying to neuroscience programs where part of the admissions process is an interview; the programs that shortlisted her flew her out for an interview before she got accepted. Med schools applicants often need to interview too, but they have to pay for the trip themselves.</p>
<p>As for the timing: it varies. All of my schools had a formal open house for admitted students but invited me to visit at our own convenience if that date didn’t work for me. Most of the open houses were adjacent to a weekend, e.g. Thursday-Friday or Monday-Tuesday. A single program had an open house before the application deadline, but applicants had to pay for their own travel and lodging.</p>
<p>The point about how a student would already have to be admitted makes a lot of sense. Like I said, a couple professors just mentioned this to me and didn’t mention any details so I wasn’t sure about how the process worked. Also, in my case the field would be civil engineering. </p>
<p>I guess, as b@r!um says, it depends on field. What is your field? My son was flown everywhere for interviews. Most schools oferred 2 dates, but one school just had one date.</p>
<p>Three of the schools I applied to offered to fly me out. Mind you I live in Germany so after I let each of them know this, one flew me out anyways, one said I’d have to pay for roughly less than half the trip and the other offered me a Skype interview.</p>
<p>These were invitations before I was admitted and after they reviewed my application.</p>