Reapplicants: making contact with the same professors?

[ridgey]

During last application season, I contacted a grand total of one professor in advance of my application. We had a pleasant enough phone conversation, but in hindsight it wasn't great. We talked quite generally and she offered some thoughts on the US application system in general (I'm international), but we only touched on her research.

Anyway, now it's a year later and I'm not sure about contacting her again. I think she'd probably remember that she talked to me last year - we had a hard time setting up the conversation, and I have the weird accent thing going on too! I assume that if I email her, she will ask me to call rather than have an email conversation, since that's what happened last year. I guess I could come up with some good questions to ask her.

My other thought is that there is another prof. at that school whose work is also really interesting, though not as much as the first prof. I'm considering maybe just contacting her instead. My SoP would mention them both but focus on this second prof in this case.

If I did contact the first prof, I feel like saying "I got rejected last year but am a way stronger applicant this year" (formally, of course) might make it easier? I dunno, it just seems the awkwardness factor is really high contacting her.

Last year, this school's application had a space to enter the names of faculty contacted pre-application. So I guess I really have to contact someone, yeah?

What would you do?

[Nikki]

I'm also applying again this year and when I emailed the profs again I mentioned that I was reapplying again this year and that I was still very interested in the program. If it was a prof I had a lot of contact with (or they were helpful after the fact in telling me how to improve my applications)then I mentioned that I appreciated the assistance. Most of the profs emailed back saying they remembered me and that they looked forward to reading my apps this year.