researching grad schools

Its.a.secret--

Welcome to A2K.

Have you checked the websites of the schools you're interested in. Many of them offer virtual tours and all of them have a great deal of helpful information.

In fact, in this day and age, if a college or university doesn't have a good website, they might be backwards in other ways as well.

As for admissions interviews, why not check out the websites and then contact individual admissions departments?

I think it would be helpful to actually arrange face-to-face chats with students at your prospective schools. Since you say you can't get time off right away, for now you should gather as much online information as you can find about each program. Someone's suggestion here about virtual tours is a good one.

Also, once you are in communication with members from the programs, they can probably give you the names of students who would be good to discuss the school with. From there, you can call and arrange a way to talk more in depth.

Thank you both. Noddy and reid_g, I think the virtual tours will serve me well. Now this is going to sound weird, but do you know of any inexpensive ways to call up the colleges. I don't want to be put on hold only for my cell phonee company to charge me for every minute.

Most colleges--at least the ones I deal with--have toll free numbers.

For phone service? Um, OneSuite is inexpensive which is helpful for long distance calls. I've used them for years. But I was under the impression that most universities have 800 numbers, as Noddy said, anyway.