WhoaNonstop wrote:
Although socializing is important, one night of partying with current and prospective graduate students should not be one of the top reasons that you attend a school. No matter where you go, you should be highly surprised if there aren't graduate students there who will want to go out and have fun from time to time. I actually prefer to go on "personal" visits myself. Open houses are planned because they are efficient for faculty, graduate students, and the department in general. I think a lot more of the school's underlying character can be seen when visiting by yourself. How much is the school interested in your success? Do they make it seem like it was a hassle for you to visit? Were professors able to make adjustments in order to meet with you? At one of the schools a professor invested two hours of her time to meet with me because she was aware of my interest in her research. At another school, they scheduled extra time with the graduate students of the professor I wanted to work with because once again, they knew of my interest in the subject.
I think this is what most people want. At least this is what I'm interested in. People who are committed and will invest time in me. I'm not saying you won't be able to identify this at an open house, I just believe that it is much easier when you attempt to personalize your visit.
It's not about the social scene that I'm particularly interested in. No one surely should decide which school to go based on one night of partying (I much rather sit on the side and watch people party rather than participating in the party itself; and the loud music always makes me uncomfortable anyways), but I would
dislike having to keep coming up questions to ask in a formal meeting between one perspective (me) and one or several current students. That would be an awkward situation by my book. So many things cannot (or I don't know how) be asked directly, and I usually forget some things I meant to ask. Having other perspectives to do part of the asking, and observing the current students interact among themselves are much better ways to get information for me personally. Direct interactions are undoubtedly informative, but I feel like I don't get the full picture unless I see the professors and current students interact with others other than myself. Well organized open houses should give many opportunities for people watchers like me

, while I doubt I would get much of that with non-open house visit unless I'm determined to be a stalker around the offices and hallways.
As for time investment, this must be significantly different based on previous research experiences and specific fields. Unless one has significant research experience in the particular field of the professor, I would not take the willingness of the professor to talk/take lots of time to meet as an indicator of any sort, especially if the professor or the particular field is popular. If I want to be a string theorist (fortunately not

) and there is nothing in my past experience that shows whether I will or will not be a good string theorist, I would not be surprised if a string theorist professor takes only lukewarm interest to me, especially if there are 10 perspective students every year who want to be string theorists and among them only one or zero will end up making it.