What proportion of PhD acceptances get invited to visit the university?

Hi collegeconfidential,

I’m an undergraduate at NC State applying for grad schools (well, already applied). I heard back early from GT, as I was already invited to come visit the campus (so I assume that hints heavily towards an acceptance perhaps) and I was wondering what this may indicate about my chances of getting in/getting invited to other graduate schools.

Are more students invited than eventually admitted? If you get invited is it more like an interview or are you more likely to be already accepted? Anyone’s thoughts/wisdom would be appreciated!

It totally depends on the school - it varies a lot. If you were already accepted they would have said so in the letter, so this is likely just a stage in the process. Many PhD programs interview their candidates before accepting them.

If you haven’t been accepted yet but were invited to campus, then it definitely bodes well for your chances of being accepted to Georgia Tech. Most programs invite more students than they plan to admit, but not terribly more - it’s expensive and time-consuming to invite people to campus, so they tend to only invite students they feel strongly about. At my program, we tended to invite about twice the number of students we eventually admitted.

If you are not admitted yet, the visit will likely be more like an interview. You’ll probably talk to a few professors who are interested in having you in their lab, or whose interests overlap yours. Many programs also lead a tour, and take students out to dinner, and the grad students sometimes have a social or something so that you can ask them questions in a more relaxed atmosphere. My department used to have a party at a professor’s apartment when we had prospectives.

Some programs do invite their accepted candidates to campus to visit, but when that happens they make it clear in the letter that you are already accepted.