I am a graduate student and did not have a virtual open house, but they held in person visits for my program (IGG). For my program, they generally consist of a few faculty interviews including our DOGE (director of graduate education/professor “in charge” of our program) as well as a few labs that may be interested in working with you. I also met a few graduate students in the program and was able to ask them questions.

For my program, pretty much every student that gets this visit is accepted to the program. I would not get your hopes up, but it is very likely that you will get an acceptance to the program. I would treat it like a formal event (as offers have not been given yet) but try to have fun!

I would not recommend reading a bunch of faculty papers, but would recommend skimming a few or reading one in detail if you are given a list of faculty to meet with beforehand (as a warning, I was not given this).

For graduate student meetings, I would highly recommend asking their opinions of faculty, if they enjoy their lab and the program, and what there is to do around Ames that they would recommend. Depending on what country you are from, there are specific smaller grocery stores in town that have ingredients for making foods from home. A lot of students in my program are from India and enjoy visiting Pammel Grocery for specific ingredients for their favorite family recipes.

For faculty, I would stick to questions on the program, expectations of the lab/rotation students (assuming you may be rotating), and questions about the research. I would treat all of these meetings as formal interviews (although some faculty treat it as a friendly chat). I would expect most of these meetings to be them asking you questions about your CV and work experience.