What's the point of visiting students?

Question

I've started a PhD recently and seen a few students from other universities visit our lab for a few days or maybe few weeks. The other university pays all expenses which many times amount to thousands of dollars. Most of the time, the visiting student gets a place, brings her/his own laptop and does research the way he does it at his university.

What's the point of this? Couldn't the visiting student just stay at his university and discuss his research with our lab on Skype?

One explanation I thought of is face to face networking but the cost seems to high for that. Or it may be an excuse to travel and see the world, but that's quite ridiculous. I also asked the visiting students, but they told me they didn't know.

Answer 1

The main goal, from my experience, is the facetime with many different people. Skype is nice, but it's primarily intended for conversations with very few people. A visit allows students to to talk to many professors and students face-to-face in a short timespan, get to know the place, interact with students in a lab, and get a sense for what the place is like, something which is impossible over the 'net.

Also, this gives the university a good chance to see what the student is like. It's easy to look good on paper and can put on a clean shirt (pants optional) for a skype interview. It's a lot harder to keep up a fake act in front of dozens of faculty and students over a one-or-two day period.

Answer 2

For me, one of the main goals of visiting the grad schools I was interested in was to figure out whether the location was somewhere I'd want to live for the next 5+ years. If the research is a good fit at a given school, but you'll be mugged, or miles away from civilization, or miles away from the nearest Thai restaurant, or whatever else that'd make you miserable, that's something you'll at least want to know when making your decision, and I think spending a few days at each of the places you're (seriously) considering is helpful in that regard.

Also, I think you're underestimating the value of face-to-face networking. Walking around the department, chatting with the grad students, professors, etc. you bump into is much easier than scheduling a Skype session with everyone you might conceivably talk to, and yes, there are certain non-verbal cues that you'll miss when video chatting. And the general atmosphere is something to take into account too; do the grad students seem to get along, hang out together, help one another? Does no one come to their office because the building is too depressing?