Be intentional when you contact a faculty for grad school

Morning walk to work

I hear from students at times: "I sent  emails to 260* professors for my grad school and no one bothered to reply." I sympathize, but then ask, "Did you put the effort to write those emails?"

(*some really high unrealistic number!)

"Yes, I did. I spent a day drafting that email." Remember these are often not native English speakers. So, drafting that email can be intimidating. They can be intimidating to even native speakers.

"Can I see?"

"Sure."

"Ok, that is a well-written email. But you did not make a connection to why this university and why this professor. The email looks too random and not directed to this professor."

"Oh, I see."

"Can I see another email?" "

"Another email?"

"I mean, one you have sent to another professor?"

"Ok, here!"

"It is the same email!"

"No, I changed their name."

Now, you see the problem. They drafted one careful email. Sure, they spent one whole day drafting it. But then to send them to each individual faculty in different universities in different countries: all they did was merely changing the name in the "Dear Dr. ____"

Why should I reply to an email that was actually sent to 260 people? Some do not even bother to change the name. So, they make it easy by just sending "Dear Professor," I mean, "Dear Professor" is great. But the email should specifically say why you contacted me rather than an email that could be sent to other thousands of people.

In the era of ChatGPT, drafting these emails also do not take one whole day anymore. I receive many emails from students which I sense written by or with the help of ChatGPT. That is okay. But why should a professor reply to an email that was too generic? Same goes to employers too.

Sometimes I receive somewhat personalized email, but obviously phrases copy-pasted from my profile, even showing different fonts. For example, "I contact you because I share the same research interests as you: Distributed Computing, Wide Area Networks, Middleware, Telehealth, Circumpolar North.

I mean, if you really have that perfect overlap, your CV, experience, and email should reflect it more, rather than giving an impression it was copy-pasted from Google Scholar (because it was!).

Now, students complain, why should I waste an hour to send an email to a professor who would anyway ignore it. This is because you have already assumed they will ignore. In that case, there is no need to send at all, rather than doing a Russian Roulette of doing a numbers game and throwing arrows everywhere hoping at least one would land.

So, what should I do?

Consider an email as the first meeting. Find the professors and universities that you really like to work with. Be honest with yourself in the email. Do you really like all these research fields or are you just open to any field. Maybe skim through a few recent papers of the professor and their research team. Anything impresses you? No? Then probably better not to send that email at all. Yes? Maybe read more. In your email, mention what you liked about their research. Do you specifically like their university or city for whatever reasons? You can mention too. Spend an hour drafting each email individually and personally, rather than spending a whole day drafting a "perfect" email which you then mindlessly send to 260 people with no change except for name and email address.

I always want to reply to all the emails I get from students all over the world. But I also notice they were just sending as a mass emailing scheme. In the rare case I reply, those students do not even bother to reply back.

When I was a student sending such emails, my emails never got ignored. Because, those were intentional and carefully and personally written. So, focus on quality vs. quantity when you reach out to faculty for your grad school.

Good luck.