peachpenumbra

I'll definitely do that then. Thanks so much for the tips!

Thanks for this - it's an interesting tactic. I naturally thought that including a CV would be cumbersome and they wouldn't read it, but if it really works I'll try it. I haven't actually written an academic CV yet because I haven't ever had a need for one, so that's something to work on!

I'm a US citizen studying English in the UK. I'm going into my final year of undergraduate and am getting ready to apply to PhDs in the US, but I've been getting conflicting advice from my advisers. Everyone has told me that I should email potential supervisors before applying, because I need to make contact with academics to boost my chances of acceptance. The email structure that I've tried out on a couple of professors is introducing myself, a brief description of my research interests, mentioning the professor's work that interests me, and asking if they're accepting grad students for my year of entry. The responses that I've received have been very positive and friendly, saying that my research interests fit in with theirs and that I should apply, but they also explicitly say something along the lines of, "unlike in the UK, in the US you don't choose a supervisor until you've been accepted and I don't get to choose which applications succeed". So my question is, how should I be phrasing my emails instead? If my emails have no impact on my acceptance, should I still be sending them? They also have all suggested that I contact the graduate chairs to pose questions about the application process. Would that just be technical questions about how to apply and what they look for in applicants? I feel like I'm missing a piece of the puzzle here because the advise that I've been given doesn't match up with the reality of the situation. Any advice on what I'm doing wrong/right?