For international students it’s not always easy to land a fully funded position for postgraduate positions, or at least that’s been my experience. I was very much detrained on doing a PhD but I wasn’t sure how and I lacked the proper guiding by a someone who went through that. I had little options on how I could pursue that and one of which was getting in touch with potential faculty members through emails. I wasn’t sure it was going to lead to anything but long story short it did. The most interesting thing was the responses and encouragement I received even when a faculty member wasn’t going to recruit me. This piece of writing is about summarizing this experience in words. It consists of percentage of positive replies, example of personalized email content, and what the title of the email should be.

Toward the end of my Master’s and for around 4 months, I reached out exactly 58 potential professors/labs, through email, inquiring if they are accepting new PhD comers. I wasn’t sure how much of these emails will be read or how many responses will I receive. Add to that, I wasn’t even sure about the content and title of the emails I was going to send. So, it felt it’s a good time and opportunity to experiment with different contents and titles and have the process noted to rate the success of each change. My sole purpose of this writing is to shed a light on the effectiveness of emails landing a PhD position.

These 58 emails smeared over a big chunk of the world, from Australia through South Asia, Middle East, Europe and to North America, encompassing 17 different educational institutions. For the sake of anonymity and respecting other’s privacy, the name of individuals and relevant information will be omitted.

Responses percentage

Before answering the question of how many out of the 58 emails faculty members positively replied to me, it should be kept in mind that not all the response I got back were positives. Some of “negative” responses replied that they are not looking for hiring PhD students at the time. Of these “negative” replies some bid me a good luck because they’re not looking for someone at the moment, which was really a nice boost to my morale, or others directed me to how I could pursuit my interest through other channels, which was the least expected response from a super busy professor. Sometimes I was even directed or encouraged to apply for a particular scholarship or be vigilant for upcoming opportunities that would come up soon. I just would like to emphasize that although the “negative” response was in fact a negative response, the fact that these professors would take the time to write back encouraged me to preserver in my quest.

The total response percentage was about 41% (exactly 24 emails out of 58) which was much higher than I first anticipated. As was mentioned above, this 41% contains “negative” replies too. The positive replies constitute the ones that are willing to hire me if either I partly or fully fund myself (trough scholarships and whatnot) and the ones that granted me an interview for a full funding position. These emails make up around 7 emails of the 24 responses. Since I couldn’t partially nor fully fund myself, I was left with only 2 responses, super positive responses, that granted me the opportunity for interviews for further assessment on their parts.

Although the super positive responses make up just around 2% of the total responses, they were enough to grant me a 2 official offers for PhD positions at two different institutes. By the way, these two options were more than enough to tear me apart about with which one I should start my PhD.

The key for all the positive responses was translating the countless time and effort of finding suitable faculty members that I had similar research interests with into a personalized email. This should not come a surprise. All the advices I have read and heard have been about reaching out though a personalized email. Mainly because it gives the impression that you have a somewhat clear idea in mind about what you want to do and you are not wanting to do a PhD just because it’s the only option you have as international student.

Personalized email content that led to an official offer

After I omitted the personal information of the faculty member I reached out to and my personal information too, I’m sharing one of the emails that led to an official offer. Reading this email after almost more than two years, as you will see, I realized that the email was beyond perfection yet it was enough to spark an interest that led to something tangible.

Dear Prof. NAME
My name is NAME, a master's student at the final stage of my thesis at University of NAME majoring in SCIENCE MAJOR
Recently I was doing some reading, from the relevant literature, on the topic of NAME and I happened to read your review paper titled "NAME OF THE PAPER" which I found very informative and helpful. If I may, this has encouraged and led me to get in contact with you.
Briefly, I have developed interests in SCIENCE MAJOR, the basic stone of the contemporary sensor systems. I intend to do a Ph.D. on an extended topic of the aforementioned topic at University of NAME.
I plan to apply to University of NAME soon, this summer perhaps, which this brings me to express the following. I wish to learn whether or not you are accepting new Ph.D. comers and if, of course, you are interested in this email.
I am sure you are busy, but in case you wish to have an idea about what I have been working on, I have attached my CV as a PDF file for your kind information.
Many thanks for reading this email.
SIGNITURE

All in all, one needs to have some idea about his/her PhD and find faculty members that he/she shares the same interest to prepare emails of higher chances of being read. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to maximize the number of personalized emails to maximize chances.

Quick note on how much does title influence responses

For the case of open positions, you should follow the instructions of what the email title should be, if there’s any. In many occasions, perspective PhD students are asked to reach a particular personal stuff or a faculty member by sending email with a particular title. In this case, it’s important to make sure you send the email with the correct title because otherwise you might risk having your email ignored or buried under big piles of unread emails.

On the other hand, when there was no such a request I was not sure what the proper title should be. So, I turned to Google and looked it up. I found plenty. Apparently, there’s no such thing as the “best” or “seductive” title. So, I experimented with punch of titles. When I started receiving responses, I had no reason to suspect that one title yielded more responses than the other. All I felt was the all the tiles I experimented with were enough to capture the recipient’s attention. I feel like, as long as the title is self-explanatory it should be fine. The following titles I experimented with more or less yielded me the same number of responses (positive or negative):

Potential PhD student at University of …
A potential PhD student
PhD applicant
Open positions for PhD students
Prospective PhD student