A PhD student visit day is a (typically) 2-3 day event in which departments invite admitted students to visit the university, chat with department members, and hopefully choose to accept the offer. All prospective students attending the visit days are already admitted, typically to multiple competitive programs, which makes this a high-stakes recruiting event with a budget and expectations to match.
On the students side, they are deciding where to spend the next five to eight years of their lives. Their highest priority is to find an academic environment that they feel is productive, and to (hopefully) identify potential advisors and collaborators to work with. To them, a PhD represents a high-stakes investment of the most productive years of their lives, and so they come in with high hopes and expectations.
Because this is a high-stakes game of matchmaking on both sides, a well-organized visit day is essential to help your department stand out.
Broadly speaking, the goals of the event are to:
- Foster new academic relationships between visitors and existing faculty and students.
- Show off the student culture in the university.
- Advertise the department and university facilities.
The Visit Day Process
(The times shown here are recommended, but not required. The latest we’ve ever started is sixty hours before the visit days, and those visit days proved to be a success!)
T-4 weeks This process generally starts when a shadowy cabal known as the admissions committee produces an initial list of students to extend admissions offers to. (As students reject offers, they may release further names from the waitlist to hit their recruiting numbers.) This generally happens about 4—8 weeks before the visit days.
The department administrator will generally send out acceptance letters and an invitation to the visit day, and a form to gather information, like who will be attending, which faculty members they would like to talk to, and which department events would they like to attend. Administrators will also begin working with faculty to figure out their availability, which students they would like to chat with, etc. The final stakeholder is the college dean, who generally specifies the dates and structure of the visit day.
T-3 weeks The department administrator then puts all this information together and generates the event schedule along with meeting schedules between individual faculty and students. The schedule is sent out to faculty and students, and requests for amendments begin flooding in. Meanwhile, the administrator is also busy booking food, venues, hotels, transport, etc.
All this happens before the visit days even begin.
Visit Days
I’ve organized about fifty different visit days over a dozen departments. They all have a very similar overall structure, but are populated by very different events. Here I’ll present the “average” visit day.
T=0 days The night before.
Students arrive at the hotel during the day.
In the evening the students are greeted at the hotel by existing students and there’s some kind of reception. This is typically done at a local restaurant, followed by a bar.
T+1 day The visit day.
8:30am Students either walk down with a graduate student chaperone guide, or take a bus from the hotel to the university.
9:00am Welcome remarks over breakfast.
10:00am Some presentations by the more popular or senior faculty members.
About 10-20% of all faculty members receive 80-90% of the requests, so it is not uncommon to have the most popular faculty members give presentations to the student body.
12:00pm Lunch with faculty and current students
2:00pm Open time for one-on-one meetings.
Meetings are scheduled in response to student and faculty requests. Students not in meetings can socialize with current students.
4:00pm Optional campus tour.
6:00pm Lab- or area-specific dinner.
7:30pm Return to hotel room.
8:30pm Party hosted by current graduate students.
T+2 days The second and final day.
8:30am Students make their way to campus.
9:00am Breakfast
9:30am Open time for one-on-one meetings.
12:00pm Lunch and closing address
Students leave for their next visit day.
Throughout this process, in addition to handling all manner of logistics, you will have to field a constant barrage of requests for more meetings, follow-up meetings, and to update faculty availability. The success of the visit day depends on being able to make these changes quickly and accurately, and keeping everyone informed of the changes.
The success of the visit days will be measured by how many of these high-value students your department is able to recruit, and in the impression of your department that these students carry with them for the rest of their academic careers.