Email from Professor - now what?

[Eckingsan]

I received an email yesterday from a professor saying that they've looked at my application and think that I would make a great addition to her lab, since she has one opening for a grad student beginning Fall 2012, and to contact her if I have any questions about her work or my application to the school.

Any idea as to how this translates? Also, how do you think I should respond? I assume there are other students competing for this same position, and that they also got this email, so I definitely want to do this the right way and not mess things up!

[ktel]

Totally depends on the school. For the schools I applied to that basically guaranteed your acceptance as long as your GPA was over a 3.0. For other schools you still have to get past the admissions committee. If you really would like to be in her lab and work with her, I would definitely follow up. This is a good sign. I wouldn't assume she sent this e-mail to very many students.

[OnceAndFutureGrad]

That sounds like an acceptance to me, and the best sort - a personal message from your potential adviser! Congratulations! I actually think that other students didn't get this e-mail, why else would she explicitly say that she have just one spot open? Hopefully no one is that cruel!

I don't know what your position is, but polite and honest is the way to reply, as always. Let her know if you are waiting to hear from other schools, ask her about funding if that's an issue, and any other information you'd like to know. Good luck, and congrats again!

[Eckingsan]

Thanks for your input! I'm very excited about this! My stats are fairly good, and what has hurt my application at other schools has been my lack of publications, but other than that I feel like I should be pretty competitive for acceptance with 3 yrs research at a gov lab... So, I'm going to be open/honest/polite as you've suggested and let her know that I'm very interested in her research and would like to get in contact but that I'm still in the early stages of getting application feedback.

[socihealth]

You may consider taking this opportunity to ask any questions you have about the future directions of their research or the structure of the lab. Now that you have some positive feedback from them you can further explore your fit in their group. Congrats on this result!!