How to write the right email to a prospective PhD supervisor

Scholarship aside, the idea of writing to a prospective supervisor is to know what their current research focuses are and how your own interests align with theirs.

Research the group’s activities.

When you write to them, you need to understand their lab or group. Take time to understand what each person in their group is working on. Be extremely specific in your approach.

For instance, don’t just go on about saying, “Dr. Menon, I have completed my master’s in physics and have an interest in nanotechnology or luminescent nanomaterials. I was looking for a PhD position and was hoping you might consider hiring me as one.” That’s very vague and would appear to me as though the candidate has not really found out what my current focuses are.

Or..

“Dr. Menon, I have finished my Master’s in civil engineering and am looking for a PhD position in your university.”

I understand that they’re not looking for a position with me, but this shows that they haven’t done any kind of research before mailing me. If they had, they’d have known my university doesn’t have engineering disciplines and this ruins the impression I have on the student.

If, however, a student says, “Dr. Menon, I have done a master’s in physics/chemistry/materials science, etc. and in due course developed an interest in materials for bioimaging/fuel cells/photodynamic therapy. Given my experience working with Prof. Poelman at Ghent University (or whatever) on persistent luminescent phosphors for in-vivo bioimaging during my master’s thesis, I believe I would align well with your group’s objectives.”

Well, now, I’d be interested in at least speaking to him/her.

Understand how your skills would align with the lab.

Additionally, you need to be able to clearly convey what skills you’ve acquired over your academic career that you could offer my group. I know you’re just a master’s graduate and I have very realistic expectations.

However, something on the lines of, “Dr. Menon, from your recent publications, I see that you have collaborated with Dr. Kunti at CNRS for Reitveld refinement of XRD patterns and Dr. Harris from DTU for DFT calculations. During my master’s, I had comprehensively learnt Reitveld refinement and I offer my expertise in using FullProf software for this. I have also started learning DFT calculations and am convinced that I would be fully trained in it within a year.”

This is good. This shows 2 things:

1. You are well aware of my group’s recent publications, which shows that you know have researched my activities quite well, and
2. You have understood what’s missing in my group and where you could come in.

This also goes on to show that you have good rationalisation and interpretation skills which is critical especially while doing literature survey.

I cannot stress enough how important this point is!

Grades don’t really matter. But…

… you need to have relevant research experience for me to back you up. I’m not looking for super-genius overachievers, per se. At the same time, I cannot hire average students with no research experience. However, if the letter you’ve written to me is the way I like it, hitting almost every point I look for, then your grades wouldn’t matter one bit.

Average grades with decent research experience will do just fine. I need to know you have an aptitude for research and grades have nothing to do with aptitude. Trust me, I was a very very average student in school and college! But I was passionate about research and always jumped at an opportunity to work with a scientist.

This section doesn’t need to be highlighted as such because I’ll be going through your CV anyway and from the way you draft your cover letter, I’m going to know what research experience you have. I’ll also be able to figure out your aptitude from your letter. Thus, make sure you emphasize on what you learnt during your various research projects. Not all of them need to necessarily match with my interests. The ones that do, you’ve already mentioned them in the previous section and that’s fine.

“I have always been drawn towards research. During my Bachelor’s, after my second year, I got an Indian Academy of Sciences summer internship position with Prof. Sinha at Manipal University, focusing on SPR based biosensors. After my third (or fourth) year, I got another short term research assistant position with Prof. Guha at IIT-Kanpur, where I helped with setting up their femtosecond laser system for waveguide fabrication. For my master’s thesis, i got the opportunity to work with Prof. Poelman…”

Do list your publications here. Even if it’s a conference proceeding, it still counts.

This shows your research aptitude. The moment I see something like this,

1. I don’t care about your grades anymore
2. I don’t care about your schools anymore
3. I still would go through your recommendations because I need to make sure you’re not bullshitting me.

English matters.

The moment the letter opens with the lines, “Dear Dr. Menon, Myself Apurva Tiwari…” I’m done. I don’t bother reading on, no matter how much research experience you have, how fancy your recommendations are or how many papers you’ve published, because it suggests that

1. You haven’t written any of those papers on your own. Not with English like that, and
2. You also wouldn’t be writing many papers on your own and if you did, I’m going to have a tough time correcting it for language.

Look, there’s no time for additional English classes during your PhD.

I’m not expecting convent/catholic school educated students who speak the Queen’s English. However, I do expect a decent level of proficiency. Odd grammatical mistakes are acceptable, however, I don’t want to go through your entire manuscript and not understand the message you’re trying to convey.

Your first draft can be in an unscientific tone. It can be like an essay rather than a scientific manuscript. That’s not a problem at all. I’ll show you how to convert your essay into a manuscript. That’s part of my job. But, I don’t have the time to sit and read every line, trying to understand what it is you’re trying to say because of poor English.

That’s something I can’t do.

As you can see, these points are quite standard when it comes to professors reading cover letters for PhD positions.

Well, you get the idea, right? If you have more questions, feel free to message me!