Visiting PhD Students

[nikopol]

Hello Folks,
It may sound naive to you, but I really wonder what's the aim of being a visiting student during your PhD?
Do visiting students attend to courses, or they simply seek for a professor other than their advisor to take advice from? Or is it an act of creating networks, investing into the job seeking year?
Has any of you visited somewhere during your PhD studies?

[Gecko]

i think, visiting another university can be valuable for your contacts later, since the job market outcomes is in part due to the networks of the people on thy committee

[KGkhan23]

Most people I've seen with "visiting student" on their CV have been non-Americans visiting Harvard and MIT. This supports the networking hypothesis? Or do they maybe do this because they already have some connection (through professors) to people at these schools?

[jeeves0923]

Originally Posted by KGkhan23

Or do they maybe do this because they already have some connection (through professors) to people at these schools?

Bingo. I know one visiting student at MIT who is here because her adviser came here on a one year visiting professorship. I think this sort of thing is pretty common.

I also met a guy at the Kellogg flyout who had done a visiting semester at Stanford GSB because there was one particular subject he wanted to learn about that Kellogg was short on and Stanford was strong in.