Non responding POI?

[colorless]

There was a thread on that but I could not find it. What if an important POI did not respond?

I already contacted many people from this particular department but this POI also the program director did not respond. One of the other POIs have told me to contact this person. Should I rewrite? If yes what should I say, how should I approach since she did not respond earlier?

[fuzzylogician]

How long have you waited? If it's been over a week, you can just resend the same email and apologize on top, saying that you're unsure what happened to your previous email, perhaps it was lost or went to spam, but you never heard back from this person even though several people (give names) suggested you write them, so you thought you'd resend the email. 

 

As long as you're polite, you have nothing to worry about. It's very possible that your email was either not seen or was seen and then forgotten in the shuffle, it can be easy for an email to get pushed down by other emails and then you may just forget because these people get multiple inquiries from students and it's hard to keep track of them all. 

[ToomuchLes]

I had a similar problem. I sent my intro letter to my POI on Sept 22nd and he did not reply. Afterward, I sent a secondary email mentioning that I was still interested in working with him, and I would like to get in touch with him asap, followed by a copy of my original email at the bottom. Two days later he replied apologizing for losing my first email in the mass confusion of the first week of Fall quarter. 

[Loric]

Been mulling over this more recently, as people actually know (rec writers) have pulled similar antics despite being entirely willing/wanting to write a rec.

 

Conclusion: People don't respond to email.

 

They just don't. If they can not respond and there's no consequence, by golly they wont respond. This is not in any way a reflection of you, their opinion of you, etc..

 

So you've got nothing to lose by writing a follow up.