Hello! Just a quick note to prospective PhD students and prospective graduate students who are sending out messages as they apply to graduate programs: it’s much much much more successful if you have research interests in mind that align with the what the person you’re emailing does or is interested in. Please don’t use ChatGPT or some other LLM to summarize their websites and their recent publications to them, especially if you cannot articulate how those summaries relate to the projects or questions you are hoping to explore. We can tell; it’s obvious.
We ✨LOVE✨ when we hear from people who have overlapping research interests! However, all of the academics I know are getting dozens of emails a week that have very little connection to their research interests, other than what an LLM has incorrectly summarized for a prospective student and then inserted into a “how to email a prospective PhD advisor” template. So ditch the ChatGPT approach. Instead, try to think more critically about how your interests connect and then only email people who you think could actually help guide your projects or questions because of a specific connection they might have with those projects or questions.