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advice for visiting outside official open house

Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2009 9:57 pm
by anerac
I can't attend one of my open houses so a school has generously set up an individual visit with me. Aside from lab tours and stuff they've set up a bunch of meetings with professors for an hour each. AN HOUR EACH. WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO TALK ABOUT FOR AN HR WITH 5 DIFFERENT PROFS?! Kinda stressin about this and hoping it's not some sort of interview. Any advice?

Re: advice for visiting outside official open house

Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2009 10:01 pm
by dlenmn
If the professors have labs, there are usually enough gizmos around that you can easily kill and hour between them telling you about their research and showing you the lab (and talking about whatever else). It's not an interview -- they do most of the talking, you just have to get them started (usually not hard... getting them to stop might be) and direct the conversation the way you want with questions.

If they do theory though, there's no lab, so you're probably boned...

Re: advice for visiting outside official open house

Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2009 10:05 pm
by anerac
I too was hoping for what you suggested; unfortunately they've scheduled the lab tours separately from the meetings...

Re: advice for visiting outside official open house

Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2009 10:17 pm
by dlenmn
Are the lab tours with the same professors as the meetings? That's just redundant.

Re: advice for visiting outside official open house

Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2009 4:59 am
by zxcv
If you've already got in, it's not an interview.

If you really don't think you'd like to talk to the profs for that long, either tell the person who setup your visit, or just cut some of the discussions short. I'm sure the profs have plenty of other stuff to do with their time so they won't mind at all.

But in all seriousness don't worry about not having enough to talk about. Just ask them, "Tell me about your research" and they'll blab on for an hour with no trouble at all. In fact, this was kind of a problem when I was visiting schools last year, so in general I recommend asking for the 5 minute summary first.

Re: advice for visiting outside official open house

Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 2:44 am
by cato88
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Re: advice for visiting outside official open house

Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 6:15 am
by anerac
Thanks for the advice! It worked out for the most part but in the end I did run out of questions and things to say.... i.e. ended up asking if there were showers in the building for those marathon research seshs and plus I like to shower. Many people at this campus do not share my showering interests... but that's a different story haha.