Điều nên tránh khi viết email tìm giáo sư

Một chia sẻ sẽ giúp ích nhiều cho các bạn đang apply PhD. Chú thích ảnh bài viết là 1 ví dụ tiêu biểu KHÔNG NÊN làm theo smile emoticon
Nguồn: https://goo.gl/E0Cmn8
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My laptop has just said "ping", indicating that a new email has arrived. There it is, your email, asking to join my research group. Perhaps it starts with "Dear Sir", or you might have addressed it to me personally. You want to come to Winnipeg as a graduate student, having completed a Bachelor's or Master's degree in your home country, or you are looking for a postdoc position. You may be writing from an internet cafe in Nigeria, or you are at home in Pakistan, Iran, India, or some other part of our beautiful world.

I can feel with you, having been a foreign graduate student myself at some point, and it was one of the best things I have ever done! [This was at a time before the internet as we know it; when I applied, emails were called Bitnet messages, and I had to travel for an hour to visit a friend at a research institute that had access to this wondrous new means of communication. Back then, it took us about three months to figure out what that strange TOEFL was that they wanted me to take, never mind actually taking it ... But I am digressing.]

Well, I am afraid I have bad news for you. That's because yours is not the only such email that I have received recently. Since I was curious (I guess scientists are curious, and I am a scientist), I kept statistics for the last few months. During that time, I have received on average 12 "blind applications" like yours per month, amounting to approximately 150 per year, give or take. It is safe to assume that every other professor in Canada or the US gets a similar number of blind applications. Now, given my funding (we do pay our graduate students, as do most chemistry departments across North America), there are 4 graduate students in my group right now. M.Sc. students stay for about 2 1/2 years, and Ph.D. students 4 or 5 – you can do the math, I accept a new grad student perhaps once per year. So I will most likely have no choice but to reject your application! Indeed, I will soon send you a brief email to that effect. (Many people I know don't respond at all, due to sheer volume.)

What does this mean for you? You obviously have a problem: I take it that you really want to study in Canada or the USA, but so do hundreds or thousands of others in your field.

You could – and chances are you do already – take a statistical approach to your problem: You tell yourself, just shoot enough times, randomly, and one of those will eventually hit. Well, maybe this works, I don't know, but I am skeptical.

Instead, I suggest a much more targeted approach.

You see, I really care for my students, and I want them to succeed, once they have joined my group. Grad studies are not easy, and they aren't for everybody. Some people fail. At the same time, I have my own pressures to, you know, "publish or perish", as the old saying goes. It is perhaps hard to believe for you, but it is not easy to find good graduate students! For these reasons, I screen applicants very carefully, before even inviting them to formally apply to our university, and the department and university also have procedures and criteria in place for screening applicants. Basically, provided I have funding for a new student, I am asking questions like: "Is this student a good fit to the needs of my research program?" And: "Is this student likely to succeed in our graduate program?" These lead to m0re specific questions that are meant to address the general points raised above:

Is the student motivated and capable of independent scientific work?
What is the student's academic background, and is it sufficient for the program?
With appropriate guidance, will the student be able to produce world-class research and publish it in good journals, and therefore advance our field?
Is the student capable of communicating in English? Etc.
My advice, then, is for you to address these kinds of questions, and to help me answer them:

Let me know why you want to work with me specifically, and how your background fits with my research. (If you can't answer this well, don't bother.)
Provide evidence of your background, academic and otherwise. Perhaps trivial to say, but it helps to have really good grades. (At this stage, scanned copies of documents are sufficient – we will eventually ask for originals.)
Do you have any research experience already, e.g. publications? (But, beware of predatory journals and publishers!)
References help to some degree; much more so if I know the referee or know of his or her work. (And yes, that's a bit of a catch-22...)
We have some preference for Canadian applicants – because we have a mandate toward our own people, because we are familiar with the educational system, and because they are familiar with the system, too.
So, be very specific, very selective and very targeted in your application! Even then, even if the match is perfect, you will still have to deal with the fact that I'd have to have the funds first, i.e. your chances are still not particularly good – but now they are at least not zero anymore.

As a final remark, the situation for postdocs is slightly different since the financial commitment is larger. (Unless, of course, you have your own funding.) Given that my group is small, I usually advertise postdoc positions if I have them; other professors might act differently. Still, the various criteria of good match, experience, background, track record and so on apply as well.

Good luck to you! Georg Schreckenbach