It’s contact-prospective-advisers-to-try-to-get-in-to-grad-school season! There’s some good advice out there already about how to send cold e-mails, either in general or specifically to faculty, and I’ve written some of my own.
But there’s one aspect of this that I think can be a little elusive, and I’d like to expound on some more: what does it mean to personalize your e-mail?
I should note, before starting, that e-mailing prospective advisers will probably not get you in to grad school. It probably won’t hurt (although a bad e-mail may leave a negative impression that follows you thorugh the process), but it is by far not the decisive factor. Personally, all other things equal I will probably fund a student with whom I have had a thoughtful e-mail exchange over a complete unknown, but application quality is more important and is all that the admissions committee usually sees.
There is a range of personalization levels that I see. In general, more personalized is better, but a poorly personalized e-mail will not usually produce a positive response.
The best e-mails show original thought and have a clear ask.
It takes work to personalize an e-mail well. You won’t have time to throw a hundred of them at the wall and see what sticks; that is part of the point. Think of it as proof-of-work, if you want.
There are other good resources online, such as this Quora question and Philip Guo’s e-mail writing tips.
Baseline: Unpersonalized E-mails
This is the e-mail that can be sent verbatim, or with only the greeting changed, to any faculty member. It has some information about the student, but says nothing useful about how they may fit with the professor’s research group.
Keyword Salad
This e-mail is slightly personalized, in that it purports to be responsive to the professor’s research interests, but only minimally.
Dear Dr. Prof,
I am a prospective M.S. student consdering Boise State University. When reviewing faculty profiles, I found your interests in recommender systems and intelligent information sytems very interesting.
Why is this e-mail not good? Because it demonstrates no insight or effort. This exact e-mail could be sent to any faculty member by replacing ‘recommender systems’ and ‘intelligent information systems’ with keywords from their profile.
The slightly more personalized version of this borrows a sentence from my web page.
The Paper Mention
Dear Dr. Prof,
I am a prospective M.S. student consdering Boise State University. When reviewing faculty profiles, I found your interests in recommender systems and intelligent information sytems very interesting.
I read your paper “Letting Users Choose Recommender Algorithms: An Experimental Study” and found it very interesting.
This is step better. Conecting to the professor’s research papers is a useful step.
However, it still has the issue that anyone could have written this e-mail. Anyone can say that they have read my paper; did they? Did they understand it?
When I receive an e-mail like this, I generally have a few questions:
- Why did you read that paper? What attracted you to it, or where did you find it?
- Did you understand it? What do you think the key findings are? Why did we carry out this reserarch?
- What did you find interesting about it? Do you see any limitations or obvious opportunities for future work?
Do not answer these questions with bits snipped from the paper. I wrote the paper; I don’t need my words repeated back to me. Use your own words and phrasing.
The Clear Question
Professors generally love to talk about their work. A clear question or comment can facilitate an interesting discussion. So ask one! After making sure it isn’t already answered in the paper, of course.
Dear Dr. Prof,
I am a prospective Ph.D student consdering Boise State University. Should I be admitted, I would be very interested in joining your research group.
I read your paper “Exploring Author Gender in Book Recommendation”. I am interested in the social impacts of recommender systems, and found this paper intriguing. I was confused, though, by the statistical framing: the paper is set up as wanting to assess the impact on authors, particularly from underrepresented groups, but it measures the makeup of user profiles. That seems much more focused on the user than on the author. Is there a step I am missing?
Yes, that is an actual drawback of an actual paper. We’re working on it.
Things to Avoid
- Flattery. Critical thinking is the single most important skill for graduate study, and flattery reflects (1) a lack of critical thinking and (2) that you think the professor lacks critical thinking. Yes, professors can be full of themselves, but consider: if someone responds well to baseless fluff, are they the kind of person you want to teach you how to be a thoughtful scholar?
- Irrelevance. You would be surprised the number of e-mails I get asking about graduate studies or postdoc opportunities in entirely unrelated fields. Including landscape architecture.
- Mistakes in the recipient’s identity, through mis-spelling their name, misgendering them, not recognizing their credentials (e.g. ‘Dear Mr. Ekstrand’), and similar. I have made some of these mistakes myself.
- Excessive length. I don’t care about your test scores or GPA; they will be in your full application. A paragraph or two of detailed background is probably also not helpful, unless you have a specific question about how you might be able to leverage it in the graduate program. Keep your e-mail short and to the point.
Final Thoughts
There are two main purposes to an initial contact e-mail to a prospective adviser:
- To obtain specific information about the program or your preparation for it, that may inform your application or decision to apply.
- To leave a good impression as a person who engages thoughtfully and critically with the relevant research literature.
I can’t think of many other purposes these e-mails serve. They will not get you admission — only your application will do that. If you leave a positive impression, it may get your application more closely reviewed, particularly for possible funding after initial admission decisions have been made. A no-information or negative impression, however, will not help in that process.