Part Four: Reaching out to Professors
Happy Thursday!
Hopefully, in the past two weeks, you’ve been researching schools and different professors you could reach out to. If you haven’t yet - don’t worry you still have plenty of time. If you missed that blog post, I highly recommend reading it as I talk about the best ways to find a PI (and how to organize it - see the spreadsheet here).
The research for me was the fun part! I loved getting to see all the cool research people are doing and how I could be a part of it. But now for the more stressful and intimidating part…reaching out to the professors.
When I googled “How to reach out to graduate professors” I didn’t get the best responses EXCEPT for this really good article by a lab at UC Davis. One of my favorite pieces of advice they give is that instead of listing papers in progress under a CV title of “Publications”, list it under “Manuscripts in Progress”. They also recommend letting your current professors take a look at your email draft to see if it would be appropriate.
So, where do you start?
Create a CV - A CV is basically a really long resume. It lets you write out all of your jobs, research positions, papers you’ve published (I didn’t have any published yet), conferences attended, skills learned, etc. A professor can glimpse this and see your background. Take a look here if you want to see my CV!
Draft an email! The best emails are brief (but not too brief) and introduce yourself, talk about your background and interests, and connect that back to the professor’s work. My best advice is to READ their papers and find one that really interests you. Utilize that to connect back to your interests (make sure it’s more recent).
Here’s my example draft that I used to apply. Feel free to tweak this as you see fit, but this is basically the exact template I used to reach out to professors. It’s brief but gets the job done!
3. Send your emails! Make sure to keep track of who you send an email to and when you do it. In reality, you can be sending emails up until about November. A lot of applications are due in December, so plan on getting your first draft of emails out by late September at the latest. Furthermore, make sure you’re sending the correct email to the correct person. You don’t want to accidentally send them an email meant for a different professor. Talk about embarrassing…
What to look out for:
No response. This happened a lot - people are busy and they get a lot of these emails. I liked to keep track of these and follow up about a month later.
They aren’t taking grad students / don’t have funding. Again, this is typically normal. Sometimes the professor lists this on their website (and then obviously you don’t have to email them), but a lot of times you’ll need to ask. Although this can be discouraging when you really like a lab, but it’s just another closed door leading you closer to your dream Ph.D. or Masters position. You could technically apply to a university without funding…but that makes your life so much more difficult. Just don’t do it. There are plenty of opportunities out there with paid assistantships. But, don’t let that stop you from applying for grants if you can! It’s great practice - and if you win, it relieves your professor from covering some of your tuition.
They want to zoom with you! If a professor is interested in you, they’ll most likely set up a time to talk. This is a time when they will “interview” you and see if you’re a good fit. It’s also a good time to ask about their research and see if it would be a good fit for you. These meetings seem scary - but they were actually quite fun for me. It started getting me really excited about research!
After the zoom…
After you meet with a professor, they’ll probably go back in forth with you over email a couple of times, checking to see if you’re interested. Or, they’ll say on zoom if they’re interested in having you apply. It depends on the professor! Once you get the go-ahead, then you can start applying to the university. When apply, there will most likely be a spot to show whether or not you talked to a professor, and who that is.
Now, you CAN apply to a school without ever talking to the professor although I don’t recommend it. As far as I know, biology departments go through all the applications and decide who they’re willing to potentially take. Then, they talk to the professor about which applicants they liked the best. The odds of a professor picking you when you haven’t reached out to them are quite low…and it makes sense as to why. They don’t know you! Zooming with a professor gives you the opportunity to show yourself to them and show your passion for research.
When all this has passed, you’ll get an email from the graduate school showing whether or not you’ve been accepted. If you’re accepted you get moved onto recruitment weekend woohoo!! That’s a whole other blog post - check it out here!
Best of luck to everyone applying this round. If you have any questions or need any advice, I’m always available by email! Just check my contact page.
Cassidy