Graduate school visits for prospective graduate students are like a trip to Disney Land. You will see so many shiny things and have so many fun memories. The truth is your experience on these graduate school visit weekends will be one of the best trips you’ve ever taken. I mean, even the current graduate students look forward to this Every Single Year.

It’s not just the students, the faculty and staff are also just as pumped. Departments will dangle so many carrots in front of you to convince you that their school is the absolute best thing since sliced bread. So how do you see through all of this charade and make the best choice for yourself on these graduate school visits?

We offer you 5 tips to make the absolute best use of these paid graduate school visits.

Grad School Visits Tip #1 : Journey to campus

How long is the journey to campus? An airport can tell you a lot about the kind of city you’re going to be living in. Does it take a few hours to get from the airport to campus? Is campus easily accessible? This might be a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things, especially if you don’t have to leave the city very often but it does tell you something about the kind of city you’re moving to.

Grad School Visits Tip #2 : Students’ Enthusiasm

How enthusiastic are the graduate students who ferry you from the airport to your hotel? The quality of graduate students you will meet when you arrive on campus can give you some insights into the department in general. Are they friendly? Do they seem like people you would want to go to dinner and drinks with? Aka good colleagues? These folks are giving you a first impression of the department. So are you impressed?

It doesn’t stop there though. Watch throughout the weekend for how the graduate students interact with one another? Do they seem like actual friends? Or are they meeting each other for the first time that weekend too? – We have a particular story we can share on this 😆, let us know in the comments if you want to hear the particular story that comes to mind.

Grad School Visits Tip #3 : Professors. Professors. Professors

Once you’ve settled into the main events of the week. Begin to take a closer look. Are there professors attending the social events throughout the weekend? Do said professors seem awkward or relaxed? Another key thing to observe is how the current graduate students interact with the professors? Don’t be too smitten though, only about 1/3^rd or less of the professors in the department actually show up for these visits. Others, well, are just not all that interested in socializing.

You should definitely talk to the professors who do show up at these social events. This is one of the unique times you would have to interact with them in a slightly less formal setting. Milk it. Ask all the questions you need to make the right decision. If there’s a specific professor whose work you’ve admired from afar, or who inspired you to apply to the school, reach out to that professor and interact with them.

Grad School Visits Tip #4 : Look at the wall

When you get a chance take a look at the wall of their graduate students? – Are you excited about the makeup of people that you see on the wall (i.e diversity and gender make up)? For one of our founders here at the SASS she looked at the graduate school wall and realized that she was going to be 1 of 2 people in the department who were black, out of over 100 graduate students. So she said, no thank you. There’s nothing wrong with being the only, you can certainly trail blaze and be the first. But it is better to be prepared for that eventuality, than to be surprised.

Grad School Visits Tip #5 : Introspect

Gauge how you’re feeling as you walk through the department. Do you feel Impressed? Excited? Concerned? – You are going to go on tours of some labs in the departments. Are you inspired by the labs and facilities? Think about the kind of research you want to do? Does the department have all the resources you would need? If you’re curious about whether they have a particular instrument that you’ve been dreaming of working on, now is the time to ask. Curious about their computing cloud cluster? Ask about it. Remember this is an information gathering session for you.

In addition, you’ll want to have some questions ready to ask the graduate students. So here are a few to get you started.

We know we’ve proposed a lot to you in this post. While it is an important decision you have to make, don’t stress too much about it. Gather as much information as you can, but be sure to have a good time on these graduate school visits. Free trips are harder to come by as you move up in the world.

And if you have visited many schools and still need help deciding, read our blog post about how to make the best choice. Lastly, here is some more bonus reading about how to maximize your graduate school visits.

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