Wednesday, December 12, 2007

What (not) to write to potential graduate advisors

Female Science Professor did a great post today with generic samples of emails she receives from interested prospective graduate students. If you are interested in going to grad school, don't write emails that fall in the first two categories. It might take you a really long time to go through and read about someone's research and write them a thoughtful email, but that's really what they're looking for. If you are estimating how much time it will take you to research and make inquiries about grad school, you should double or triple that amount of time and it will be closer to accurate. It felt like a significant part-time job for me for about 2 months, and that was even before I really started doing the applications.

5 comments:

Hajar Homayouni said...

Have you any suggestion for applying together with our spouse!! My husband and I are planning to attend in a same school. how should we contact with the potential supervisor?? Do we have to mention this in our first email? Do we have to send emails separately?? How can we improve our chance to get admitted in same place???

Karina said...

That is a really good question, and I think it depends on many factors-- especially the type of program you are applying to and your respective backgrounds and interests. If you are applying to work with different people in the same department, I think it would be best to initiate contact separately, and then once a conversation and interest is established, mention that your spouse is also seeking admission. What kind of program are you applying to? This is an old post, but I'll try to draw attention back to it to see if some of my readers have more useful suggestions (and experience!).

Hajar Homayouni said...

Thank you for your reply, we both want to apply for PhD program and are both as the same field of study, our articles and researches were also together, I am am searching for an impressive sample mail.

regards,
Hajar

Karina said...

Can you be more specific about your field? Is it ecology/evolution/behavior or something else?

Hajar Homayouni said...

It is computer science