Experiences with contacting professors?

[InquilineKea]

What were your experiences with contacting professors, especially this late in the admissions cycle?

[waddle]

it's not that late. Some professors will email right back, some will get back to you in January or sometime after the app deadline has passed (presumably because they saw at least part of your application package by then), some will never get back to you. Or since we're talking about the Earth sciences, some people you contact may actually be out in the field (I had that happen and wondered why they took 3 months to get back to me ...).

[InquilineKea]

Haha wow

[Kitkat]

Here's a question with that... if you got in contact them before hand and they never heard back from them (even with repeated tries), and the application asks if you contacted them, do these attempts still count?

[InquilineKea]

Probably not. Though maybe you could list them.

There's always a chance that you might have given an unfavorable impression too though...

[Kitkat]

Well I am hoping that it is just because they were busy at the time, and by multiple times, I mean about twice.

[LCBucky]

Kitkat- I'm sure that the professor you contacted was just really busy....this time of year is pretty hectic and who knows how many emails they may receive a day.

I heard back from about 4 out of 5 professors. Most were quick about getting back to me-- a couple times, in fact, within the next 12 hours.

[InquilineKea]

it's not that late. Some professors will email right back, some will get back to you in January or sometime after the app deadline has passed (presumably because they saw at least part of your application package by then), some will never get back to you. Or since we're talking about the Earth sciences, some people you contact may actually be out in the field (I had that happen and wondered why they took 3 months to get back to me ...).

Interesting - what happens when they see at least part of your application package by then?

[waddle]

Interesting - what happens when they see at least part of your application package by then?

They'll probably shoot you an email if they're interested. Perhaps following up with an invitation to chat over the phone or in person. Or even with an informal acceptance!

[InquilineKea]

Interesting - did you get an informal acceptance anywhere? And if you did, which program was it from? I'm just curious to know.

Edited January 5, 2012 by InquilineKea

[InquilineKea]

Sum total of professors emailed by school:

Columbia: 9 (8 replied, 1 did not reply, several very enthusiastic responses). Split between Astro and EESC departments.

Caltech: 6 (all 5 in GPS/ESE replied, though Sean Carroll did not )

Brown: 5 (all but 1 replied). Special case though, since for some reason, they always hit the "reply to all" button...

MIT: 4 (all but 1 replied). My fault for the 1 who didn't reply - just looked at the email I sent to the one who didn't reply - it showed a formatting error since I sent the email when i was very tired.

Princeton: 2 professors, 2 postdocs (all replied, but research interests insufficiently similar)

Berkeley: 2 (1 replied, 1 from Astro did not reply)

Chicago: 2 (introduced through IRL connections first so different - but we definitely clicked with each other at the AGU)

Penn State (1 Astro, 1 Geoscience): 2 (all replied)

Harvard: 1 (replied)

UCSC Astro: 1 (replied)

Arizona LPL: 1 (introduced through connections)

Yale: 1 (replied)

UCLA: 1 (replied)

Colorado Astro: 1 (replied)

UIUC Astro: 1, but long ago (replied)

Edited January 27, 2012 by InquilineKea