<p>I'm the parent of a college student who is starting to think about graduate schools because of advice she received from the professors whose labs she worked in this summer and the papers she read to do this work. She will be a junior starting this semester.</p>
<p>Do people visit graduate schools before applying? If so, when? I wonder if this advisable in her case because some of the places she is thinking about are quite different from the northeastern urban mid-sized university where she attends, in the sense that they are in small towns in rural areas in other parts of the country.</p>
<p>I don't know of anyone that visited prior to applying. For most programs they'll actually fly you out to visit the school and meet the professors you're interested in working with once you've been admitted (or, if the school does interviews prior to admission, for that). It's also better to do it that way, since you'll have arranged meetings with professors and get to meet a ton of other prospective grad students.</p>
<p>The only way I can see visiting a school prior to admission is if there's a professor you really, really want to work for, and you can talk them into flying you out beforehand. Then they can put in a good word for you during admissions season, and you should get in no problem.</p>
<p>I agree with RacinReaver. I applied to schools based mostly on the research being done at each school (i.e. since you said your daughter is thinking about grad school based in part on the papers she read, the best place for her to start her search imho are those papers. She should find out what those PIs are researching now and pick the schools where there are multiple people doing research that is interesting to her). This, of course, varies by field, but in molecular biology I find it helpful to have at least 3-4 people you would be interested in rotating with your first year at each school.</p>
<p>The schools that are interested in her will then pay for the trip either after acceptance or for an interview (which for a majority of schools all but means she is accepted). Then she can pick where she wants to go after getting a feel for the place. The best part of these weekends is that everything is covered. Airfare, hotels, meals, and she can meet with the professors and current and prospective grad students over the weekend. Heck, some interviews that my friends and I went on paid for ski trips and extravagant meals. We joked that we should compile a list of the best schools to apply to based solely on what you got from the interview weekend, but I digress.</p>
<p>Bottom line is it depends on her field (if you feel like sharing that might help your responses), but from my viewpoint it is not necessary to visit before applying.</p>
<p>I did a few school visits, but they were for the purpose of getting to know the cities / environment rather than specific schools and professors. My friend was scoping out medical schools, so the two of us flew out from San Diego (we were lifelong Californians) and went through Boston/Providence/NY/Philly in a week. For myself, the trip helped a lot -- I had never been out here before, and could have happily stayed in my Californian bubble with the number of good schools already out there. </p>
<p>(In the end, the trip was worth it -- both of us committed to grad/med school respectively in NYC.)</p>
<p>Thanks all. Astrina, I'm relieved to hear you and a friend visited places to get an idea about different environments, because that's what I had in mind, and I thought about it as a way to narrow down the programs my daughter might consider seriously applying to or perhaps to weed out places in which she really would not want to live. She has some time between the end of her work and the beginning of school, so I may offer an early birthday present of travel money.</p>