(Harry Lewis helped me with this post.)
March 15 was UMCP Computer Science Grad Student Visit Day. I suspect many of my readers are at schools that had their Grad Student Visit Day recently, or will have it soon.
In 1980 I got into Harvard Grad School in Applied Sciences. I went there in the Spring to talk to some people and take a look at the campus. I paid my own way- it did not dawn on me to ask them to reimburse me and I doubt they had the mechanism to do so.
I know a student who got into two grad schools in 1992 and contacted them about a visit. Both set up the visit and reimbursed his travel, and the two trips helped him decide which school to go to. His criteria: The grad students looked happy at one and sad at the other. He went to the school where the grad students looked happy. Was it the right choice? He got his PhD so... it was not the wrong choice.
That was then.
In 1980 no schools that I know of had anything called Grad Student Visit Day. In 1992 I suspect some did but it was a mixed bag.
Now all schools that I know of (including Harvard) have a day in the spring where prospective grad students in CS are invited to come to campus. There are talks about grad school at that school, a very nice lunch, and 1-on-1 (or perhaps finite-to-1) meetings of grad students with faculty. Students are reimbursed for travel and lodging (within reason). There are variants on all of this, but that's the basic structure. The idea is to convince grad students to go to that school. It also serves the purpose of helping grad students who are already coming to get a sense of the place and a free lunch. It costs money: reimbursing students for travel and food for the students on the day itself.
Random thoughts.
1) In 1980 no grad schools in CS did this. In 2024 (and I think for quite some time except the COVID years) all CS grad students do this. Does anyone know when the change happened? I suspect the early 1990's.
2) Do other departments do this? For example Math? Physics? Applied Math? Chemistry? Biology? Engineering? I doubt Art History does.
3) Does it really help convince students to go to that school? I suspect that at this point if a school DIDN"T do it they would look bad and might lose students. Is there a way out? See the next two points.
4) Do students judge a school based on the professors they see (``Oh, UMCP has more people doing a combination of ML and Vision then I thought- I'll go there!'') or on the quality of the food ("UMCP had ginger bread for one of their desserts, which is my favorite dessert, so I'll go there.'') or how smoothly the trip went (``UMCP had an easy mechanism for reimbursement, whereas school X had me fill out a lot of forms.'')
5) Are we really advancing the public good for which we (schools) either have tax-exempt status OR are using tax-payer money by spending extra money to provide better meals and softer beds than our competitors do? Maybe we should all agree with each other to not waste money trying to outdo each other on stuff of no educational or research significance to the students. But wait---THIS MIGHT BE A VIOLATION OF ANTITRUST LAW. We are competitors, and under federal law are not allowed to (I think) cooperate to prevent a bidding war, even when it would be in the public interest that we do so in order to save money to use on the stuff that matters.
6) One benefit I get from this as a professor: During the talks I hear things about my department I didn't know.