I definitely emailed professors way in advance like early august. Before I emailed I read about the faculty on the school pages and also checked the NIH RePORT to see if they had any grants that I could work under https://report.nih.gov/award/index.cfm. Tried to set up zoom chats and then developed a solid elevator speech about what i want to do and how that fits with their current work, made sure I had at least 2 questions about their research ready to go in each meeting.
In terms of myself I did a second masters program, was able to help a previous mentor with a book chapter, submitted three invited articles from projects I had worked on in my first masters. I also work full time in the field I want to study so was able to talk about practical applications of the potential research in my application. but this has been super exhausting and I am ready to just commit to a program and focus on being only a student for a while.
This time I applied to 11 schools:
- interviewed with 6 so far
-rejected from 1 but the poi I had talked to left the school before the application review began, bummer ?
-assume rejection from 1 because no interview
-3 programs I have just not heard from or read about on the main results page
hope this helps!