Professors get a lot of emails (on the order of hundreds a day). That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t email them, but rather that you need to be strategic about how you email them to get a response. Here are my tips on how to get a response from me. These tips are probably useful for other professors as well, but you should ask them first! I highly recommend Yonatan Bisk’s FAQ for more guidance.
General Tips
Using my contact form will reduce the chance that your email gets into spam.
Make it as easy as possible for me to respond to your email.
If you have an ask, put it as close to the top as possible.
Have your first paragraph be as short and direct as possible.
If the email must be long, use formatting (bold, italics, etc.) if you want to highlight something for me to notice. Don’t use it for every sentence or if your email is only a few sentences long!
Note on ChatGPT
I discourage using ChatGPT to email me because
I can usually tell
the writing style is often purple prose, which is very annoying to read
it robs you of a chance to develop your own writing skills
If you must use it, please ask for it to give you a very concise email and don’t just paste in the four paragraphs it spat out to you. I always prefer to see a email with many spelling and grammar mistakes than a generated email.
How to Convey Your Interest in My Lab
If you are interested in working with me, read my admissions FAQ to make sure I’m hiring in your area. Follow the directions there to prepare your resume + portfolio appropriately and then send me an email.
Pro tip: Read the MERGe Lab research and publications pages to tell me explicitly which papers you like and why.
Tell me about your interests and what you want to do, not what you think I want to hear. Be as concrete as possible without falling into cliches (ex. “ever since I was a little kid, I wanted to make robots”, “robots are the future and I want to be a part of that future”)
Think of talking with an academic like making music in a jam session. Jam sessions are fun casual times where we riff off of each other’s knowledge and see what new ideas can come out. However, this means we need to have some common ground before we can start making music together. If you show up to jam session without an instrument or an instrument that is different from what I’m used to, it’ll be harder for me to jam successfully with you. Make it easy and exciting for me to respond to your email.
Here are some examples of good/bad communication for a student with interests that are very far away from my research area:
Bad: “I’m interested in exoplanets”
I don’t do research on exoplanets. This tells me you did not read my web page.
Bad: “My past research in exoplanets makes me a good fit for your lab’s interest in tactile sensors”
You read my web page, but I don’t know what exoplanets have to do with tactile sensors.
Better: “I’m interested in using your devices to help make more accurate tools to discover exoplanets”
Neat! I still don’t know anything about exoplanets, but now there’s something we can talk about. I’m super curious to know what connections you see between my work and your interest in exoplanets
Better: “I really liked your paper on X because Y. I’d like to explore more topics on X, especially to apply them to exoplanets.”
Awesome! We can have a fun research conversation where I teach you about X and you can teach me about exoplanets!
Even if you are already interested in the same topics as me, we probably don’t like them for the same reason. You should make your interests as clear as possible
Very Bad: “I’m interested in working on anything!”
This gives me no insight into what your actual interests are nor what skills you hope to gain. I am trying to figure out if there’s a good project that fits you, and this tells me nothing.
Bad: “I’m interested in building robots.”
Ok! I am too, but so are many other people. Why are you specifically interested in robots? Are you interested in robots the same way that I am or different?
OK: “I’m interested in robots because they seem neat. I want to learn more about them”
It’s OK if you don’t know what you like about robots! I can work with this. Our conversation will be more exploratory. At the end of the conversation, you probably won’t be working with me, but I enjoy having these kinds of conversation if I have time. The fancy term for this is “informational interview”, which you can use on other folks.
OK: “I don’t have experience with robots yet, but they are interesting to me because of my experiences with X”
Robots are pretty expensive to get into, so I understand that not everyone may have that opportunity. This response tells me that you’ve thought about how your past experience might connect to potential future experiences. It tells me more about you and gives me something to ask about.
Better: “Robots seem neat because I like the way they X. I’d love to learn more about how they Y.”
Great, I know more about your interests and your motivations. We can have a concrete conversation.
Better: “I really liked your paper on X because Y. Are there any projects similar to X?”
I’m very happy you looked at my work and thought how it applies to you. Even if projects directly on X aren’t available, I may be able to find something that applies to your interests in Y.
Communication Boundaries
If you know me personally, e-mail is the slowest way to get in contact with me. Please come by my office, call, text or DM me on social media instead.
If you are not my student, colleague or do not know what my pet’s species / name is, then you do not know me personally. Please do not use non-email channels to contact me until we have been introduced. Due to my experiences with harassment, I will block you without hesitation for violating these boundaries.