Potential Supervisor Didn't Respond to Email

[dancewmoonlight]

Hi, all --

I'm sure there's something in the forums about this, but I couldn't find anything, and at this time of year, I'm sure it's relevant to a number of people.

I've gotten my potential Ph.D. programs for application down to five and have selected my potential supervisors. Last week (Aug 27-ish), I e-mailed them to talk about their research, share my interests, and request further information about their programs. I kept the e-mail relatively short (about 3 brief paragraphs) and inquired when they'd be available to chat more. A week has passed, and I haven't heard anything back.

I know its a busy time of year with classes starting, and I don't want to be annoying, but I also want to ensure these are the best programs and supervisors. How long should I wait before e-mailing again?

[RyanS]

Depends a little when your deadlines are for making your final application decisions. With that aside, I'd say 2-3 weeks from the first email. Keep it very brief, include the original email below, and assume any error is in your side. For example: "Dear Dr. Chu, I hope you are doing well in your new academic year. I'm following up on the below email and wanted to make sure it reached you. Please let me know if there is any other information that I could provide or if I could clarify anything for you. I appreciate your time, -dancewithmoonlight"

Edited September 5, 2020 by RyanS

[JQRocks]

Not sure about English/education programs.

Also, did you got accepted into these programs already?

In general, there are few reasons:

1: The program is committee-oriented. Suppose the first year of the program is designed to be lab-rotation. In that case, it's pretty certain that the admission is committee-orientation. PIs have a minimal role to play in admission. (Except for start-up PIs, they generally have green lights to recruit directly to their lab since they need students to do research right away.) PIs won't be willing to pick you up from the application pool either, since you might end up with another PI after the rotation.
2: Not active in recruiting, may be out of funding.
3: Not active in research and doesn't reply to research-related errand emails. Commonly seen among senior/full professors.
4: Not a really good match. But generally speaking, if they are eager to recruit, they will at least talk to your first before deciding if you are a good match or not.

I would say a good follow-up period is 7-10 business days. That way, when they read your second email, they might still remember your first email, and realise that they forgot to reply the first one.

[Crucial BBQ]

Professors receive a lot of daily emails.  It's possible that your emails were lost in the mix, shuffled off to the side, not deemed important, and so on.  For biology-related fields it is common, and sometimes required, to contact at least one potential advisor prior to or shortly after applying.  However, in some disciplines this practice is not applicable if not outright discouraged. 

If this sort of thing is common to your field, then JQRocks lays out the most likely reasons and with #2 - 4, if they are not interested for any reason they are most likely to simply not respond.