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So I have been getting ready for my campus visit to Kenan-Flagler. I didn't see a lot of information about what to wear, so I decided to write a post on what I feel is appropriate for different types of campus visits. To me, there are really three different types of campus visits.

1) Campus visit meeting with students, touring campus, and sitting in on a class (no interview)
2) Interview only
3) Both 1 & 2 in the same visit

Campus visit meeting with students, touring campus, and sitting in on a class (no interview)
My visit to Kenan-Flageler will fall under number one. So the question is "what is appropriate to where for a campus visit only with no interview?" In my opinion, you don't want to stick out too much when you are meeting with the students and sitting in on a class. Therefore, I feel that business casual is appropriate. I will be wearing a pair of dress pants and a dress shirt. In my opinion, a pair of nice khakis is appropriate as well.

Interview Only
This is a no-brainer. You MUST where business professional to an interview. I won't go into details on what type of suit to buy because I plan to do that in a future post.

Campus visit and interview
This is probably the most complicated scenario of the three. Again, you must where a suit to the interview portion of the visit. However, you may consider going with a business casual approach for the rest of the visit. This is appropriate IF you have a break to change. My suggestion would be to lose the suit jacket and keep the shirt and tie on. However, I would recommend reaching out to a current student to see what he/she recommends.

My next post will be an update on how the campus visit went and my initial feelings of the school.

Kenan-Flagler Visit



I had my visit to Kenan-Flagler this afternoon. Overall, I was pretty impressed with the school and feel like I would fit in well. Below is my detailed debrief of the visit.

Arrival
I got to the admissions office about 40 minutes early and it was filled with ten other students and a first year student to answer questions while we were waiting. It was tough to really ask questions in that setting, so that wasn’t very valuable. However, it was good for the prospective students who were waiting to interview. It seemed to calm them all down. Also, I found out that I was one of only two that were visiting only and not interviewing. Thus, I was the only guy that wasn’t in a suit. However, my attire made me look like a student. Therefore, I stand by my decision to wear business casual.

Lunch
Once all of the students got to the admissions office, we went downstairs to the café to have lunch. The café was not bad, but not great either. I sat by a second year student at lunch and had the opportunity to ask a lot of the questions that I was interested in. She was VERY passionate about Kenan-Flagler. Overall, lunch was great and I asked a lot of questions. A lot of the other prospective students seemed a little shy to ask questions, so I was happy to fill the void. After lunch, we went back up to the admissions office to wait for students to bring us to on a tour.

Tour
I was impressed with the McColl building. The study rooms were great and there were a lot of them. The students seemed to be very collaborative. The tour guide I had was actually doing his first tour, so it could have been better. Not much else to say about the tour.

Class
I got to sit in on a Marketing class. I guess I was lucky; I got a great professor that I discussed with the second year student at lunch. He started the class with welcoming the prospective students. Then he had the two of us introduce ourselves to the class. The class was great and very welcoming. I actually sat by a student that went to high school in Pittsburgh (small world)! The class was interesting and he talked about different ways to price. He reviewed the demand curve form microeconomics and then went into price bundling. The class was very interactive and the students were really interested in learning.

Final Thoughts
The best part in my opinion was sitting in on the class. I could definitely see myself fitting into that type of classroom atmosphere! Overall, I was very impressed with Kenan-Flagler. However, this was my first school visit. I don’t really have anything to compare it against yet. I will be able to judge better once I visit a few more schools.

It seemed to me that most of the perspective students were very nervous. I guess that is why they weren't that talkative. I kind of felt bad because I kept asking the questions because they couldn't think of anything to ask.

What was your opinion overall of the school? What class did you sit in on?

This is awesome!

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Sorin Istrate - Community Manager

MBA Watch - Your one-stop shop for all MBA program research

If anyone is curious, here is a timeline with myGMAT and b-school progress. I plan to apply to programs next year.

NICE! I love this visual timeline.

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Sorin Istrate - Community Manager

MBA Watch - Your one-stop shop for all MBA program research

Thanks dragoljubce for sharing your experience--a very common story too, sounds super stressful!

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Sorin Istrate - Community Manager

MBA Watch - Your one-stop shop for all MBA program research

Yes, your timeline sounds stressful. I prefer mine; it is much more relaxing!

Hi Don Wrigley,

I will be applying to programs in the fall of 2010 too. I personally feel it is ideal to visit the schools this early. I like to be well prepared and think it is important to visit schools prior to applying. I am sure that after visiting all of my target schools i will remove one or more from the list if i don't think the school will be a good fit based on my visit.