For those who'd like to pursue a PhD degree

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http://www.cs.virginia.edu/%7Eevans/adv ... ctive.html

Advice for Prospective Research Students
Like most professors, I get several hundred emails a year from prospective students interested in coming to UVa for graduate school and joining my research group. I try to reply to all messages that are not obviously spam, but find most messages I receive make me less likely to want to accept the students sending them. This page provides some advice for prospective grad school applicants considering emailing me, but most of it probably applies to any other professor you want to contact also.

Who To Contact
Its a really bad idea to send spam emails to long lists of professors. These emails will never help you, and some professors will maintain blacklists of applicants who do this to make sure their application is rejected without consideration.
Your goal in sending email is not to contact as many professors as you can, but to identify a few professors who you might want as your research advisor and then to find which of those seem most promising as advisors and convince them that you would be a worthwhile student.

You should only contact professors with whom you have a genuine interest in working based on knowing something about them and what they do. You can find out about professors' research by looking at their web pages (professors who don't have web pages about their research are either not interested in recruiting students, not doing any research, or so famous they probably have someone to filter their email for them).

Do Your Homework
Before contacting a potential advisor, do your homework: read the advisor's home page (mine is http://www.cs.virginia.edu/evans/) and at least one recent paper (links to my papers are available at http://www.cs.virginia.edu/evans/pubs/).
If doing this doesn't give you any interesting ideas, this is probably not someone with whom you want to do research so you shouldn't waste time contacting her or him. If it does, send a short introductory email.

First Email
Please see: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/%7Eevans/adv ... ctive.html


What Not To Do
Never do any of these:
Don't send information about your GRE scores, GPA, class rank, cholesterol levels, favorite movies, etc. and ask what your chances of admission are. Standardized tests and grades have minimal influence on your chances of admission and reveal very little about your potential as a researcher. No one can or should tell you anything about your chances of admission based on an email.
Don't send a first email longer than one screenful (about 60 lines). You should be able to get across everything you need in a first email concisely and use longer emails if technical depth is required in follow ups.
Don't waste space and time telling me how hard-working, creative and smart you are — demonstrate it with the contents of your message.
Don't waste space and time telling me how brilliant I am. The fact that you are interested in joining my research group is flattery enough.
Don't make generic statements about being interested in my work or how well it relates to your interests. I have projects in several different areas and can't figure out what you mean unless you describe a specific connection or interest.
Don't attach anything to your email. If you want to provide additional content, you should do this by sending a URL (as plain text, not a link). If you are not able to create a web page, you may mention that you have a relevant paper and will send it to me if I request it.
Don't use HTML encoded email or non-standard character sets. If you are a non-native English speaker, make sure your "From:" address appears using the English alphabet. If you have a common or difficult for English speakers to pronounce Chinese name, it is to your advantage to use a name that English speakers can pronounce and remember. I do realize it is very unfair for us to expect you to change your name for our convenience and cultural ignorance! But, once you get admitted you can and should tell people what you want them to call you.
Don't use any fancy formatting in your email (including your message signature).
Follow Up
Since most professors get lots of email, there is some chance that even if you do everything right, your message will get lost in my inbox and you won't get a reply. If you don't get a reply after about a week, send a follow up email that politely asks if the message was received and includes the previous message. If you still don't get a response, that's a pretty good sign that the potential professor you are contacting is not someone you want as your advisor.
Conclusion
Getting into a good PhD program is extremely competitive and professors are strongly motivated to identify and attract the best possible research students to their group. At reasonably good departments (including UVa), the acceptance rate is usually in the single digit percentages. At the most competitive departments, only a few slots every year are awarded to students without recommendation letters from people the faculty know well.
It takes work to find the right PhD program and advisor, but contacting potential advisors directly is your best way to find a research group that matches your interests and goals well and to improve your chances of being admitted.

Once you've read and followed these directions, please feel free to contact me about coming to UVa to do a PhD in Computer Science. Your goal is to start an interesting email conversation about research ideas.

If you find that my research does not fit well with your interests, feel free to contact me for general advice and suggestions on other professors to contact. If you follow the suggestions above, I am likely to reply, especially if you ask questions that are not answered by http://www.cs.virginia.edu/WhyUVA/.