How to Email Professors Efficiently

How to Email Professors Efficiently

Email enables the way to express and elucidate one’s relevant essence explicitly to a Professor. The respected professor can explore the enthusiasm and energy of endeavor to reply if the email is written with the elegant sense of encouragement and strategic sense of efficacy. The cogent and concise clarification in the email can make anyone getting replied and evolved simultaneously. The email is to be formulated by the craft of important bases with a view to constructing the infrastructure before sending it to the professors. The bases are to be built by the specific sense of simple strategies.

Exploration

One should list the name of the professors before starting to send emails. He / She should explore people specifically using the profiles available according to the purposes, interests, and goals. It has to keep in mind that one should avoid sending the same email to each of the professor listed rather each email should be specified by being focused on the professor only.

Email Address

The email address should be formal and represented by the name of the candidate rather than by any witty or funny abstract which may create a wrong visualization, e.g: brucewayne@gmail.com is better and smarter than whimsicalwayne@gmail.com with respect to reflected personality. It is very important to maintain a formal email address to contact any professor.

Subject Line

When it is time to email a professor, the subject line is the most important initial step to build an email. Most the emails are not even opened by professors because of having a vague and irrelevant subject line. They get so much email from universities, students, research communities. If anyone puts in subjects like ‘admission’, ‘scholarship’, ‘Hello’, ‘Hi’, ‘How are you?’, etc. – there are chances that the email is not even read rather deleted. Some sample subject lines to email professors for admission:

• Fall 2016 Prospective Student: Research Information needed
• Summer 2017 Student: Biohybrids -  Research Question
• Fall 2018 Student: Need info on Research prospects at Yu Bioinformatics Lab
• Summer 2017: Research Assistantships Info needed, X Laboratory

The emphasizing word to inscribe in the subject line is ‘Prospective Student’. Usually, no professor would avoid any email if it has prospective student because you are a potential student to the university and they will read it and reply or forward it right person if they do not know. So the subject line is so important that it can help anyone evolved an elegant relationship to step onward with career and education. It is the initial step of the journey towards thousand miles.

Etiquette for starting mail / addressing professors

According to Raymond Hickey from the University of Duisburg-Essen, sensitivity to titles is a personality issue. Some individuals do not mind a somewhat informal address, others take umbrage at not seeing their academic title in the opening of an email. You may write in English: “Dear Peter Jones” (first name + surname). This is not disrespectful and is very common when writing to strangers in contemporary English. Only use the first name of a lecturer when you have agreed on this with him or her already. If you want to be on the safe side, simply write “Dear Dr. Jones” or “Dear Prof. Smith” given in last name and nobody can take offense. It's better to avoid professor, all are not professors by designations. Use "Dr". However, use one, not both. “Dear” denotes the premises to preserve the politeness. It is very important to spell the professor’s name right.

Etiquette for signing off an email

To sign off one should be concerned about 2 important points:

Salutation

One should sign off with regular polite word “Regards” or “Thanks and Regards”. It may be used as “Sincerely yours” with respect to the exchanging emails. One should not use anything informal or impolite e.g: “see ya” or “goodbye” etc.

Signature

A brief signature usually contains full academic name including your degree programme and year of study with email address & contact number on e-mails in signing off helps the recipient to understand who it is from, especially if the person is unknown.

Research / Study on Professor

It is essential to study & homework on the potential professor and his/her contributions, research works, groups and laboratories regarding the respective university. It helps anyone to visualize the areas and reflect his interests naturally while writing that provides a complete understanding of the professor’s research area. Every professor specializes in particular research area and they have research grants only related to that particular research area. They can consider anyone for funding, if he/she are interested in the research they are expert in.

One should mention about specific research works of the professors in the mail. So he/she should collect and search professor’s work in university websites, google scholar and specific websites which are given in his/her profile. If possible, one can contact the members of the research group of the specific professor before mailing to get merged in ideas. If one can read few research papers of the professors and mention them in the email, it clearly shows that he/she has done homework and they will be interested in at least replying to you.

Reflection of Inborn Interest

One should be concerned enough to present his/her interest in a cogent way with clarification and a connected way so that the professor can find the reflection of his own interest in one’s inborn enthusiasm to work with him. One can include concisely and smartly about his/her research works/experience relevant and related to the professor’s works. If anyone has publications/paper it should be mentioned with proper emphasize. The presentation of the lines should be natural and instinctive.

Correct use of (English) Language

Professors are academicians and so they are very good at articulating rules of a language. Email is to maintain proper English, especially grammar, spelling, and punctuations. If one does not write an email without proper English, it clearly indicates incompetency. They expect someone applying to Graduate school should have proper writing skills and ability to articulate ideas in a cogent way properly. We strongly recommend using ‘Grammarly’ as google chrome extension or install it in the computer to check the mistakes in grammar, spelling, punctuations, and structures.

Attachments

If there are requirements according to the website of professor one should attach the documents listed in professor’s profile to contact him e.g.: transcripts, cv/resume, a brief statement of interest otherwise one should not send all documents in the first email before professor asks for it. One can send a concise form of cv in the initial email to give the professor a precise perception of him/her. One can mention the URL of own website (if possible) to make it concise. It should be kept in mind that one should send all documents in pdf format so that it will not disturb the professor during perusal. The CV should maintain proper strategies to become an excellent art of attitude and altitude with the perception of personality.

Rules to Regulate to Excel the Email [Dos & Don’ts]

• The subject line is to be useful. It should convey the specification and importance of the message. It should not be anything vague or absurd.
• One should ensure a relevant (to the recipient) subject line. He/she doesn’t reply to an old message in order to raise a completely different topic: it will be less confusing to begin a new thread with its own subject line.
• Do spell the name of professor correctly and appropriately. 
• Address the professor formally. In other words, address professors as Professor or Dr. One should never use: Miss, Ms., Mrs., or Mr. for addressing anyone from graduate school with a Ph.D. or Post-Doc. 
• Never use emoticons in email body/signature/greetings/salutation.
• Do not use any baffle formatting rather one should use a format of the word which is easy for perusal and comfort for eyes to read e.g.: one can use Verdana, Georgia or Sans Serif in Gmail.
• One should avoid unnecessary use of bolding/underlining words and lines.
• Never send email it from a non-professional email address (that is, your school email or an address that includes your name is to be used as mentioned earlier).
• Don’t send e-mails that sound curt, abusive, or demanding, or make unnecessarily personal remarks.  It is unsmart & unnecessary to tell the professor how smart or hard-working you are. All graduate students are smart and hard-working. Don’t send an email to show yourself off.
• Never send same / spam e-mail to different professors in a generic way rather each professor should be given respect by having specifications and individual importance to receive email.
• Signing off the email with politeness and formal etiquette.
• One should send email on working days and maintain a time to mail professor when there is the possibility that they may receive email and open inbox. One should use world clock specifically.
• One should be patient and allow around three working days for a response (any urgent matters may well require a phone call); vacation periods may require more time, although staff continues to work full time during the vacations with their research and administrative commitments. Never bombard your addressee with e-mails, especially at weekends when members of staff will be out of their office.
• One should do proof-reading of spelling, punctuation, structure, and grammar before sending the email.

 

Email can be a potential premise to develop a prospective relationship with respected professors. So, each email to any professor should maintain proper & natural etiquette, simplicity, relevancy, and specification which can be structured by means of strategic steps and ardent attention.