We do. No.

-cvj

Who pays for these trips? Are these what the admission fews to grad school are used for?

I wasn’t really expecting anyone besides a few friends from undergrad to actually read the post, so it was written (but not proof-read) with them in mind. That has several implications: Some things are exaggerated (Clifford wasn’t really talking to three people–two, if you count the produce vendor) and some things were left out (Dallas has a really long airport, and I’m from Chicago). Most of the intended audience had already heard bits and pieces of the visit, but not the whole thing; The report was really meant to fill them in. So, as Clifford says, just add salt! Having written all of the above, it would make me very happy if my report helped other people their quest for graduate school or graduate candidates (or both, but I don’t envision many people in that situation).

Clifford’s femtosecond rejections (see, he can think on femtosecond time-scales!) make sense to me. Actually, I would go a step further–I thought that the entire point of grad interviews was to make sure that the interviewee is socially compatible with the faculty and students.

Clifford and citrine: Do graduate schools not usually invite students to eat on the beach? It is a very pleasant and relaxing setting—I had assumed that it was just part of the interview “script”. The farmer’s market was surreal in a good way—it was like being in one of those movies you watch in high school physics class. The ones where the white-haired professor says something like, “Well, Johnny, elastic collisions conserve kinetic energy.” Except that ours featured someone from Caltech, were shot in a bar, and tried to make too many analogies to billiards.

Thanks.

-cvj

Thanks for clarifying the situation. The reason I brought up the personality mismatch issue is based on some of my own experiences plus those of my friends in grad school. I have many socially well-adjusted, friendly grad school colleagues who also happen to be academically competent and committed to their work, but simply don’t see eye-to-eye with certain faculty. The distrust or discomfort in many cases started at the outset of the program and kept monotonically escalating. I was envisioning scenarios where the student was visiting the school for the first time and unfortunately being assigned to the wrong faculty member to be shown around and interviewed. Now, this student may have done perfectly fine with another faculty member.

This is why I’m in favor of visiting grad/ undergrad students and faculty candidates meeting and socializing with a group from the host campus so that there’d (hpefully) be a more balanced evaluation of the visitor.

Cheers,

-cvj

But seriously, there is more to getting good graduate students than just making them an offer based on paperwork. You’re offering jobs to a real person, not a sheaf of papers…. So, you want to make sure that it is a good fit. That the student is going to enjoy being at your place, and that you are going to enjoy having that student at your place. Why not just fly them out to make sure? Small price to pay to make sure…..for local (USA) students at least.

-cvj