Gradnova

I’m curious how others are navigating this, because the current process feels oddly broken. On the student side, it seems like: You cold email a lot of faculty with little signal on who is actually recruiting You apply to programs (often expensive) without knowing if there’s a realistic advisor fit Timing is unclear since funding (grants, projects) doesn’t align cleanly with admissions cycles On the faculty side (I’m CS faculty), it’s not great either: Some labs get flooded with applicants, others struggle to find good matches Funded positions can open up at random times (not just once a year) A lot of strong students never reach the right labs Given how much research funding is distributed across different institutions (not just the top 10), it feels like there should be a better way to match students and advisors directly, based on actual openings and research fit. I’ve been working on something called GradNova that tries to address this by letting students create a single profile and connect with faculty who are actively recruiting, but I’m more interested in whether others even see this as a real problem. Questions for the community: How many faculty did you email before getting a response? Did you apply somewhere mainly because you knew a PI had funding? Faculty: how do you currently find students outside your own applicant pool? I’m especially interested in cases where the process worked well, not just where it failed.