Some schools will offer to send you a plane ticket as an 'incentive' to lure you. I wouldn't go this route.

You will have to first sign a contract and commit to that school in order to get the ticket. Yes, this means committing to a school/employer/students/city you have never seen before in your life. Your school will want you to repay for this ticket if you later discover the school is not to your liking. And you WILL have to repay this cost if you want out of the contract. A contract you may have signed mere weeks or even days earlier.

So......don't accept an air ticket. Buy a ticket using your own funds, go visit the school, sign the contract THEN if you like it, and get a reimbursement for the ticket later. Remember to insist that the contract stipulate you will be getting that reimbursement later as well.

It's just too risky to sign a contract and accept a ticket before you even arrive at your new digs. After going to Korea and finding out the hard way the cold fact that we need to visit our potential employers BEFORE signing a contract, I'd say one should instead always ask for a reimbursement on the airfare later. This will allow you to avoid committing to a school you know nothing about in a town or city you know nothing about in a country you may know nothing about.

If you arrive at your new school and discover it's not what you were led to believe it is, you'll have the freedom to decline the school's offer on the spot. You'll be out only the cost of the airfare, which is good insurance, in my opinion. You also have the freedom (and the visa) to look for what you really want elsewhere for a little while.