May 22, 2013

How to write email to a professor

This post is a collection of tips and articles (mostly written by professors). In search of my quest to find a graduate supervisor, I adopted different policy and tried several method of knocking professors. Sometimes they responded, but most of them ignored me. It made me search on the web what I am doing wrong in writing the mails. The goal for this is to find a proper way of writing formal email to which professors will reply positively. I tried to collect different tips and accumulate them here so that I never lost them again. I believe it will benefit me, as well as readers of this post, to get opportunity to work under dream professor.

Before I write anymore, let me again mention this post does not contain my personal suggestions. These are collected from web (mostly from dependable sources) .

As a summary, here is the most effective form of writing email as per my findings.




Dear FSP,

I am a senior at X University, and am interested in obtaining a PhD/MS in Your Field or A Closely Related Field. I became interested in Your Field (briefly mention class and/or research experience). I saw on your webpages that you [mention something of interest as a possible research opportunity]. (Alternative: I read your recent paper in Journal and was interested in [specify]).

I plan to apply for the graduate program, and hope that your department will seriously consider my application.



Source: http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2011/10/writing-to-me-reprise.html


Collection of articles: (will be updated continously)

  1.  Writing to me (reprise)
  2. How To Ask A (Famous) Professor to be Your Dissertation Chair


This post will be continiously updated. If you have any useful link and want me to include here, please mention it in the comment. 

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