My first grad school visit was a lot of fun: lots of exciting science conversations, casual dinners, and even a little field trip. The interviews were pretty informal – I only felt like I was being interviewed for about 5 minutes of the entire weekend.  I also got to dress up most days, which was fun for me. Unfortunately, there was so much walking that I didn’t dare bring out my extra fabulous shoes and stuck to some stylish, but practical, flat boots.

A friend of mine told me she wishes she’d applied to more graduate schools just so she could have gone to more places to interview. I kind of thought she was crazy, but now I get it. I met so many interesting grad students and professors! My ecological network just got a lot bigger.

Migraine conversations with my prospective advisor and the professor that manages TA assignments went very well. I’d briefly mentioned it in one of my essays, so it wasn’t the first time they’d heard about the problem, which helped. I had time to sit down with both of them and explain how I might be limited and to discuss how we could work around the problem. They were more than accommodating.

The advice I got from you readers here really helped! I heard that I impressed a lot of people I spoke with. To be honest, that kind of surprised me; I felt like I did a lot more listening than talking, a lot more question asking than talking about my own experience/knowledge, and said I don’t understand more than a few times. But who am I to argue with fancypants scientists if they liked me?

From the field trip