The visiting weekend that comes after you here that a school has accepted you is a vital role that, at the time, I did not think was so vital. My mentor, Dr. C, told me that I should visit every school that I get accepted to, which is sound advice, but not very practical. The visitation was also the reason that I picked the school I did and why I picked the professor to work for.
Through my experience of applying to chemistry Ph.D. programs, the visitation were a welcomed release of all the stress and anxiety. The way the visitations worked for me was that once I was accepted to a school, they would also tell me when their visitation weekend was. Some schools just asked me to let them know if I wanted to visit or not and if I did then they would setup and pay for all of the travel arrangements. Other schools told me to make my own travel arrangements and then they would reimburse me for those expenses after the visiting weekend. I highly recommend having a credit card by this point in your life so that you can put everything on the card and then you just need to wait for the reimbursement. After I had been accepted to the schools I applied for, I decided not to go to certain visiting weekends because I knew I didn't want to go to that school at all. This narrowed down how many weekends I was planning on attending which leads to some interesting occurrences.
I ended up planning on going to only two visiting weekends and I had a very good idea of which school I was going to attend in the end. One day I got a phone call from the member of the graduate committee of one of the schools I was accepted to (this was one of the schools that I was not planning on going to). This was a school I was not planning on attending because there was only one PI out of the 40 faculty that I wanted to work for and Dr. C always told me that I should go to school where there are two or three people I would want to work for in case I didn't get into my top choice of research groups. Through this phone conversation, the man on the other end of the line was the one PI at this school that I wanted to work for and he was doing everything he could to just convince me to attend the visiting weekend. After a thirty minute conversation I finally told him that I would go to the visiting weekend.
I ended up going to three visiting weekends which happened to be three weekends in a row. All my professors were very understanding so I was able to skip classes and turn in some homework late due to my visitations. The first visiting weekend that I attended was at the school that I was sure I wanted to attend. I talked a lot to the PI that I wanted to work for and talked a little to my second choice. I was also given a lot of opportunities to talk to graduate students and get a sense of how the PIs acted and how the department worked. All this information was very valuable and I kept getting a vibe that all the professors acted friendly in front of the prospective students, but that they really didn't like each other very much. This made me a little apprehensive about coming to this school, so I decided to go to my other visitations with a more open mind then I originally intended.
My second visiting weekend was at the school that had only one PI that I wanted to work for. This visiting weekend was so much more friendly and open than my first weekend was. This school had gotten nice hotel rooms, all single rooms with king sized beds so no one had to share a room with other prospectives. This also allowed me to bring my fiancee with me, and the department was warm and welcoming to her as well because she would be moving with me when I would go to graduate school. This made me happy and my fiancee happy so this school seemed to have us in the bag, but there was still only one PI that I wanted to work for. I spent a lot of time with graduate students from that PIs group, but I still feared that there would not be enough spaces for me to get into his group. This ended up getting fixed because two days after the visitation, I emailed this professor asking him how many opening he was planning on having in his group and that I wanted to make sure that I would be in his group if I decided to go to this school. His response was that there was a spot in his group for me if I wanted it and that he wanted to have me in his group. This sense of having a PI want me to be a member of his group and that I already had a spot without the need of doing rotations synched the deal and I decided to go this school. I sent in my acceptance paperwork the next day even though I still had one more visitation to go to.
My final visitation was a bit of a throw out because I was only considering that school because it put my fiancee and I close to her home and I had a friend that was already in that program. Since I had already accepted to another school, I decided to just use it as an opportunity to hang out with my friend and see some cool chemistry research. This school was also in a big city which discouraged me from going there in the first place. All in all it was a fun weekend and it was good to catch up with my friend.
These were my experiences from the three visiting weekends I attended. Looking back now, I am really glad that I attended a visitation that I had not originally planned on going to so I would recommend to go to every visitation unless you have some extreme reason for not going. You may find that one professor that wants you in his group or discover some interesting research that you didn't see before. Even if you come out of the weekend knowing that you will not go there, you will likely have made some friends with the graduate students and you can network with them in the future and you may even end up starting a collaboration because of that networking. The visiting weekend was a key piece for me and it is likely a key piece for everyone so it is important that you go even if you don't think you would want or need to.
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