Another Question about Emailing Professors

[bsharpe269]

I have been VERY confused about whether I should be emailing professors this summer/fall. I have specifically chosen departments with at least 3 (most more) faculty members in my subfield. There are one or two at each school who are my favorites of course but my PI has stressed that it often does not work out with who you initially want to work with anyway. I have a ton of research experience in my field and am applying to departments that perfectly fit my experience. If all goes well, I will have 3 papers in very well respected journals in the same subfield that the departments are famous for.

 

I have contacted 1 professor so far because I wanted to read a paper of his but since it was published in a book, I couldnt without buying the $30 book. I asked him for a copy of the paper and he responded very positively and then later added me on a social networking site. I feel weird just emailing professors though if I dont need anything though. My PI told me that he gets annoyed by these emails and they dont make a difference in admission anyway so it isnt worth the time. He thinks that all of the departments I am applying to are a great fit and my application will find its way into the professor's hands during the process. What do you guys think?

[TakeruK]

I didn't personally email professors ahead of time so that they can directly make a difference in my admission. If you happen to be such a great candidate that a professor would go beyond the normal admission process to get the committee to notice you, well, then you are probably going to be noticed anyways without a professor advocating for you!

 

Instead, I did it for other reasons. First, it's a good way to see who is actually able to take on students and who is actually doing the work you're interested in. In more than one case, when I emailed the professor, I learned that the professor was no longer doing the work listed on their website and has new interests now. Sometimes this was good--the new interests might have matched my own better, and sometimes this was bad. Some professors said they were not planning on taking students from my year. Another one told me up front that he does not have any funding for the project I wanted to work on so I would have to take on extra TAing or find my own funding if I wanted to do that. 

 

So these are all useful things to know to help you decide where to apply to. I think this information can also help you shape your SOP to show better fit with the department. So, there might be indirect benefits to admission.

 

Finally, choosing a school / advisor is a big deal to me. I think it's just a good idea in general to talk to people in the department you want to be at just to see how you interact with them. If someone is going to be super rude to me because they are not interested in talking to a new scientist in the field, then I probably won't get along with them. I can understand someone being busy and ignoring my email or sending a short form response, but if they take the energy to react negatively towards me, it's not really a good sign. 

 

I kept my notes to these professors fairly short. Just mentioned that I was finishing up my MSc and was planning on applying to PhD programs in X. I told them I was interested in doing work in Y with them and asked if they were planning to take on students in Fall 2012. 

 

Also, where appropriate, I mentioned that I will be attending the next [Annual Meeting of our field's national society] and asked if they would be there and if they would like to chat. Most professors either did this or said they would miss the meeting but please talk to Z instead (where Z is their grad student or postdoc etc.).

[bsharpe269]

Thanks for the response! I think your reasons for emailing make a lot of sense...

 

I will be applying with an master as well which I think comes with having a better understanding of our reserach interests. I am pretty certain that none of the professors who I am interested in working with will have changed interests that would make the fit not as good. My PI has gone through my list of potential advisors for me and basically everyone who I want to work with is very well known in the subfield so I am 99% sure that none of them are going to completely change areas. Particular projects might change but I am really interested in biophysical modeling related to computational structural biology. The professors might change the protein they are working on or move on to a new project but it is still going to be under the same subfield and within my interests.

 

Also, these departments are known for my subfield so if my favorite guy couldnt take me then that wouldnt change my decision about applying because the department is still known to focus on my area and there are lots of other people doing similar work. There are only like 10 departments that are super strong for my area and it seems that basically ALL of the academics doing research in the subfield are at these departments. I guess I feel like I am applying more based on department than on PI. Dont get my wrong, I am still reading lots of publications by the professors at my departments of interest but its more like the department/school is famous for this work not necesarily that one or two professor is known for it.

 

Give this, does it still make sense to email? I agree that personality fit is VERY important in finding a PI but I think that it will be hard to get a sense for this over email anyway and I would get a much better feel for the fit at interviews/visitation weekends before making a decision. Sorry for all the info... I am probably thinking way too much into this but I just want to make sure that I make the right decision!

[victorydance]

I think I have decided to not contact any profs in my upcoming cycle. If I was in a more science/lab related discipline, that might be different.

 

I have contacted random profs before for data and potential indicators and both times I received great data sets that weren't public and very nice responses. So yeah I agree, it can be done, but I am the same way where I won't just send them random messages for admission purposes only tangible reasons. 

 

One time I did email a very recognized prof that is on the verge of retirement to ask if they are still chairing dissertations, they kindly replied and said they weren't sole chairing anymore (as well as her husband), so I can see that as being a somewhat simple way of contacting professors beforehand.

 

But to ask "blah blah I am interested in your work, and am I a good fit, would you like to be my adviser?" That just makes me feel awkward and a waste of time.

[TakeruK]

@bsharpe: It sounds to me you are in great shape and on track to putting together an effective and strong application. I answered your question in the other thread too before reading this one, and I think having your advisor go through your list with you is one of the best resources. For me, that really was one of my main sources of information.

 

I also agree that it's tough to really get a true feel for personality fit over email. I was just looking for really obvious red flags at this point--otherwise, yes, the best time to judge personality fit is during visits etc. However, sometimes an initial email will lead to a Skype chat or a meeting at a conference.

 

@victorydance: I agree that it's not very useful and likely frowned upon to email a prof just to see if they can help you with admission. But I also don't want any professors to be surprised by my application either. I definitely emailed every single person that I ever mention by name in the application form or the SOP. I want the professor to find out that I am interested in working with them through a conversation with me, not from reading it on an application package or having the admissions committee tell them.

 

If I met any POI at a conference or if they came to my school to give a talk, I would definitely introduce myself and say hi, and I think email is just a natural, electronic, extension of that. 

[victorydance]

^ I think I would do something similar if it was a different discipline, but for political science it seems rather useless because profs (outside of being on the actual committee) have absolutely no say in the admission process. 

[xolo]

I think I have decided to not contact any profs in my upcoming cycle. If I was in a more science/lab related discipline, that might be different.

 

I have contacted random profs before for data and potential indicators and both times I received great data sets that weren't public and very nice responses. So yeah I agree, it can be done, but I am the same way where I won't just send them random messages for admission purposes only tangible reasons. 

 

One time I did email a very recognized prof that is on the verge of retirement to ask if they are still chairing dissertations, they kindly replied and said they weren't sole chairing anymore (as well as her husband), so I can see that as being a somewhat simple way of contacting professors beforehand.

 

But to ask "blah blah I am interested in your work, and am I a good fit, would you like to be my adviser?" That just makes me feel awkward and a waste of time.

 

This is my feeling exactly.   Very well put.

[geographyrocks]

 

But to ask "blah blah I am interested in your work, and am I a good fit, would you like to be my adviser?" That just makes me feel awkward and a waste of time.

I did this exactly (although I didn't outright ask for the professor to be my advisor). Not only was I accepted, but the professor I emailed fought for my acceptance and ta position. If I hadn't made that connection, I might be one sad cookie right now.

I agree that it felt awkward, but it also got results.

[victorydance]

^ There is an argument to made that there is no downside to contacting POIs. In fact, one of my LORs made this argument. Basically, if you email all of your POIs, perhaps one of those emails will lead to someone going to bat for you during the admissions process. At worst you get ignores or their replies are either meaningless or have no effect.

 

The thing you need to weigh is (1) if the time and effort is worth it, or could be put to better use and (2) whether your discipline works in your favour or not (in my case, it doesn't).

Edited June 27, 2014 by victorydance

[rising_star]

I never emailed someone and flat-out asked them to be my advisor, though I did ask them if they thought there was a reasonable match between our research interests and if they'd be taking on new students. In my field, a lot of the funding is through the department rather than the POI, so I wasn't asking about funding specifically but more asking if they felt like they could take on another student. Some people told me no for various reasons (lots of students already, planned sabbaticals [more of a problem when I was applying to MA programs], didn't like the match in our interests, planned retirement before I'd finish, etc.), which helped because then I decided not to apply to some of those schools, which saved me money. That said, the person who became my advisor told me that he probably wasn't going to take on any new students, but might, and that I should only apply if there were other people I'd be interested in having as my advisor. There were so I did. And, at the end of the admissions cycle, he ended up taking me on as a student.

 

I also did what TakeruK suggests, which is not to read the work of all of the people I was emailing. I had read the work of some of them for classes or for my MA thesis but not for all of them and that worked out just fine. I was still able to exchange emails with them, learn about what their students are working on and their advising style, and get admitted, in spite of not reading even one paper by them in a couple of cases. Now, part of the reason I took this approach is because I changed my focus area between my MA and PhD and was very upfront about that in the emails I wrote.

 

Someone over in the Lit forum just posted about emailing current grad students. That is an excellent idea. Finding out what they're working on and the pros and cons of the program in their view can be very insightful. Some programs that have historically been excellent are having problems that you wouldn't even know about unless you asked, at least in my field. And, I have always been honest with prospective students about my views on the program (as well as on the other programs they've been admitted to).

[GeoDUDE!]

A lot of professors in Earth and Planetary Sciences keep a list ( 3 of my POIs specifically told me this after they accepted me) because they get so many people wanting to be their grad student that they like to mark down who are the strongest candidates that have contacted them. Its not the be all end all, i'm sure, but its really nice to be on that list. 

 

You could be 1/50 students who want to work with your POI, do you want to be one of those people who they havent heard from at all? All things being equal, I take the student who showed a bit of initiative. 

Edited June 27, 2014 by GeoDUDE!