Using same basic email to contact POIs?

[sarab]

Hello,

 

I was wondering if it's OK to use the same basic email to contact professors of interests and tweak a few things accordingly or if I should write individualized ones?

 

I'm mainly concerned that it will look weird/lazy if I contact a couple of professors in the same department using the same basic email.

 

Thoughts?

[fuzzylogician]

If it's a form email, that's easy to detect and those will generally get less responses than individualized emails. You don't need to write a different email to each professor, but some tweaks will help. It's also a good idea not to write to several professors at the same department and tell them all that they are your first choice, but other than that there is nothing wrong with emailing multiple professors at the same department. If you go there, you'll want to have more than one person who you can work with and at some point you'll need to form a committee of at least three professors so it's good to know that there are enough people with related interests there. 

[Monochrome Spring]

I use a general introduction about my stats and my research experience, and I use a general conclusion asking to keep contact. But then I customize everything else and relate my research experience to their interests, and talk about future plans specific to their program.

 

Hope that helps.

[zapster]

I used the same basic mail with the significant tweaks on the reason for contacting the POI including briefly talking about specific areas of their research. However depending on what they mentioned on their web profiles (e.g. specifically looking for students) I would tweak the structure as well and move the contents around. I always ended with a short-form profile / achievements. As fuzzy said, avoid a very standard form mail and telling all the profs. they are your favorite! I realized the POIs within a department definitely talk wrt prospective applicants / queries received. It may also be useful to highlight why you are interested in a specific department in general that justifies why you are writing to multiple POIs within this dept.