Let me tell you what NOT to do. The first contact should not be a spam letter -- that is, a letter that you could easily have sent to 1000 faculty members worldwide, and probably did. Why should he spend more time answering your letter or reading your resume/CV than you spent writing the letter?
Often the letter is not even minimally customized. It is addressed to "Dear Professor" and does not mention the project name or the university, even though you think my work is wonderful and desperately want to work with me. The letter gives no indication that the writer has spent even a few minutes looking at the online materials related to my work. And then these hard-working people, so passionate about my work, go on to say that they want to work with me on "algorithms, data mining, software engineering, and computer vision" -- not areas that I currently work in.
Often they throw these notes in the trash immediately, or respond with a canned message pointing to a web page with info about how to get into a CS graduate program at CMU and about the specific issues of joining his group. (In case you're interested, see Page on cmu.edu.)
But once you send him that spam letter, there's no point in then going online and finding out what he does. You're already a loser.
So if you think that you really want to work with the professor as a graduate student, first take some time to find out what kind of research he really do. Then, if you have no experience or preparation in this area, get some. Read and think about his papers (and the essays on his blog), and some papers in related areas. Think about what you might be able to add to this, and what it will take to get up to speed. Do your homework. Then write him a brief letter, making specific reference to all of that.
Also, you should know what the professor works on, and should know enough about the field to know whether this work really interests you, before you bother a busy professor at all.
One of the key things to increase your chances of admission or funding such as TA, RA or GA is to email professors and getting in touch with them during admission process. Your challenge is to make sure you write a good email that shows your genuine interest and zeal to work for the professor with passion.
1. Subject line for Emailing professors for Graduate School Admission
Subject line is the most important piece of email. Most emails are not even opened by professors; they just look at subject line and delete them. The main reason is, they get so much email from university, students, research, etc. If you put in subjects like ‘Hello’, ‘Hi’, ‘How are you?’, ‘admission’, ‘scholarship’, etc. The chances are your email is not even read. They will just delete it.
The key word to mention in subject line is PROSPECTIVE STUDENT. The trick is, no professor would throw away any email if it has prospective student because, you are a potential student to the university and they will read it and reply. Think about it, prospective students are the future customers for the School.
2. English, Grammar and Punctuations in the Email:
Some students write emails without using proper English, especially grammar and punctuations. If you do not write email without proper English, it clearly indicates your incompetency and lack of good writing skills. Professors do NOT want to even reply to these kinds of emails. They are academicians, writing good English is mandatory to succeed. They expect someone applying to Graduate school to have proper writing skills and ability to articulate your ideas properly. So, be careful when you write email. Do not use chat language like ‘c u then, hw r u?, life’s gud’ .
You have to write proper English with proper capitalizations, punctuations, and grammar. If you do not have these, you may not get positive response.
3. Research Information of Professor in E-mail:
Your email should clearly demonstrate that you have a complete understanding about the professor’s research area and what he actually does in that area. The key thing to understand is, every professor specializes in particular research area and they have research grants only related to that particular research area. They can only consider you for funding, if you are interested in the research they specialize in. When you write an email to professor, you should mention about research and use some technical jargon related to his research area. You may only do that if you have read few research papers that they have written. So, if you can read few research papers of the professors and mention about them in the email, it clearly shows that you have done your homework and they will be interested in at least replying to you. You should try to write your technical interests and be able to connect it with the research area of the professor. You can mention about your research papers or technical presentations. If you have none, just show your interest by doing some homework about topic. For instance, you may say, “I am very interested to pursue research in Neural Networks and their impact on real time decisions.” You have to do your homework and write as much research info as you can.
4. How to Ask about Admission, Fellowships or Assistantships in Email:
Asking directly that I need admission or funding is a very bad idea. It does not show that you are interested. You have to frame your sentences properly indicating your interest in school and program. Honestly, do not try to just create a fake interest or impression by saying your school is good, blah, blah, blah. Be genuine and write sincerely what you know about the school and what kind of research is at school. Do some homework about school, read the department website and research area, program info. You have to indicate that you are interested in the school because you like so and so stuff and you would like to be part of it.
For funding, you may ask like “I like to do research in this area, how is the funding situation for new students in this area?” “Do new students get any assistantships in first semester?” By phrasing it this way, you are not being desperate. It is asking in general. Most of the times, professors say, once you arrive here, meet me and we can discuss funding information.
Good Luck on your School/Scholarship hunt!
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