Visiting Campuses - How Important?

I wouldn't say that school visit don't matter. I think thats a little misleading especially when confirmed by anecdotal evidence. For example you may be a stronger applicant at a school that you don't visit and get accepted and a weaker applicant at school you do visit and get dinged.

I think the true question is how much will the school visit improve your chances. Some school require specific detail in the Why MBA, Why this school essay. NYU is one of them. I've visited a couple of times and speaking to the adcom members they want you to be specific. If you live in LA your not going to specifically tell them why NYU is a fit for you and why your a fit for NYU without a visit. You need to talk about how you feel about living in NY, how do you like the teaching style, how much you want to be involved with the students clubs and you need to do this all from experience.

This may be more important at NYU than HBS because they obviously want to increase their yield. Are you really going to be able to convince NYU that they are your top choice if you can't visit? You're going to spend over $100k for your dream school and you cant pony up a couple grand to visit. I think it's obvious that people are visiting at least one or two schools. So if you can't visit NYU then it's clear that they are pretty far down on your list.

As far as HBS they go all out when you go visit. When you show up the receptionist will have an itinerary ready for you. They love to talk about and show off their case study method. Theire website is dedicated to it. At the information sessiong the encourage you to go over everything on their website about it in great detail. It seems it would be hard to describe why this is such a great experience for you if you haven't seen it personally.

Plus without school visits how are you interacting with the current students? I guess you could just randomly email people but I don't think your going to get the same respones as you will when you meet them in person. MBA students really go out of their way to help prospective students, especially when they see your interested in the same field, clubs, etc. as they are. I've met students who've offered to read my essasy in their spare time, after only meeting once!

If you're and exceptional student you can probably get buy with a school visit. But why give someone else a chance to prove they're a better fit than you?

In agreement with you, terp. It'd be great to visit every school you can, I'm certainly not arguing with that... unfortunately, most of us don't have the time or money to do so. So you have to pick your spots, understanding where visits matter most. For example, the applications for MIT Sloan and Haas have specific portions where you're specifically asked about visits, information sessions, and even conversations with alumni. I know that visits are important at those two schools. I decided against applying to Haas because I missed the local information presentation and couldn't get to California to take a look at the school.

On the other hand, H, S, and W don't factor visits into their decision-making. All three have stated this in various portions of their websites and I know firsthand that it's true: I'd never been to the Stanford GSB before Admit Weekend, and I met plenty of people at Wharton's Winter Welcome who hadn't been to Wharton before admission. I also met several people at Kellogg's DAK who hadn't been to Evanston prior to that weekend.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't visit. If you have the time and money, take advantage of the opportunity. Getting a feel for the people and classes is important. But if you're unable to go, don't despair. Attend the local information session, talk to any alumni you can via connections, and reach out to leaders of student clubs. You'll still be able to "personalize" your essays. One more thing... I know this sounds ridiculous, but _really_ searching through the website (course catalogs, major requirements, student clubs) can be really helpful.

I have heard many times how visiting schools shows your interest and not that visiting can indeed be looked down upon by adcoms. I am sure some of the more experienced of us will chime in and provide more insight.

Try to squeeze Columbia, NYU, and Yale into one visit. I think the more remote the school (ie Michigan and Cornell), the less they expect you to come visit until interview time.

As was said, it is extremely important to visit the schools you are applying to, within reason. I flew to LA to visit USC in April, just so that I'd have plenty of info for my essays and I could apply first round. It shows the AdComs that you're serious about the school, you learn valuable information about the program with a first-hand account, and you can more accurately gauge fit. The info it gives you for your essays can be invaluable.

That being said, it is difficult to visit every school on a given list. I already know I'll be taking a road trip down South (UVA-Darden, UNC Kenan-Flagler, and Duke-Fuqua), as well as a quick trip to New York to visit NYU, as those are the schools most important to me. Flying to Texas to visit McCombs or to Arizona to visit ASU would kill my financial resources. You've got to pick your spots and go all the way.

Makes sense. I will certainly try to make it up to the NYC campuses at some point.

Omne - Just curious, how did you like USC? I did my undergrad there, best 4 years of my life.

Loved every second of it. I want to work in entertainment marketing and consulting, and I don't think there's a better place for me to be. Loved the people I met, enjoyed the class I sat in on, loved the campus.

Any particular reason why UCLA is not on your list.

Would you gain any value (for yourself or your essay/adcom) to visit during the summer? I'd like to start visiting schools however I feel I would gain more when school is in session. The main problem with that though is that once school is back in session I will already be deep in the essays and application process.

I dont see value in visiting during the summer...if you are in the area you can certainly pop in. Some schools have summer tours and you can put that in the check column. I wouldnt travel to see any school when its out of session. Unfortunately the R1 deadlines are so close to the start of school it makes it tough to visit...some schools dont even allow visits until right around deadlines.

Extremely important. I got into the three schools I visited and dinged at the one I did not visit. Plus, it shows the level of interest if you are willing to fly across country to visit.

I got into the one school I didnt visit but dinged by two that I visited...I think a visit is a miniscule piece. If you dont visit you need to go to every event they put on in your city, there are plenty of those.

Oh, UCLA is on my list. They just dropped the ball on my visit. I had been trying to set it up since February, and they didn't get back to me until early April that their class visit schedule hadn't been finalized yet. By then it was too late. I'm hoping I'm invited to interview at USC, so I can visit UCLA when I'm there and apply R2.

I think the visit isn't so much a determining factor in whether you are accepted or not, but rather provides good material for essays and the interview. When you're asked the "Why MBA? Why here? Why now?" question, you've got plenty of examples to prove how interested you are in the program.

How exactly would you weave it into your essays that you visited? Would you just overtly say, "When I visited campus...I felt at home" or some cheesy statement like that? I really want to visit as many schools as possible but at the same time I'm trying to determine if it's worth it to visit BEFORE I turn in my application or if I should wait until interviews?

Regarding info sessions, my problem is that I live in a smaller town and am not very close to any large cities that usually have info sessions. (Probably 5-8 hour drive to the closest city with info sessions)

Great point. My only worry now is that with summer here I won't have a lot of opportunity to interact with students/professors. Looks like I may have to cram a few visits in right after school starts before applications are due.

Yeah, that's the issue. I scrambled to get to LA to visit USC in April, so that I'd have ample time for the essays. There's so little time between when school starts and R1 apps are due, it's hard to visit, learn, and utilize the information before the due date. Basically, you just need to do all that you can. Obviously you can't visit every school on your list, just do your best

how come you didnt visit kellogg when you were visiting chicago gsb?