I have written previously about the need to avoid sending generic emails to potential grad school supervisors.
How do you find the balance between the speed needed to secure a grad position that prompts you to send generic, almost spam, “Dear Sir” emails to potential grad school supervisors, and the time required to personalize an email to an academic you are not sure will even read or respond? It is often a tradeoff between speed and accuracy, and it is sometimes difficult to know how to balance both.
This is the dilemma many applicants face. Although this article focuses on grad school applications, it could also apply to job applications, start-up pitches, anything involving selling capability or product to someone else.
I will show you how to achieve speed in your application without compromising customization, in order to get a quicker response from faculty and land your dream admission.
Generic vs Personalised email
A generic email is one that you could send to as many people as possible, which can still be relevant to all of them. In marketing, it is called a cold call or cold email. A personalised email will lose much of its relevance and meaning if sent to anyone other than the person it was targeted for.
The New Approach – Hybrid
In this approach, you identify the areas that will be generic and the areas that need to be customized. The generic portions can be the introductory part where you talk about your educational background and research experience(s). The research interests may be generic if you are contacting academics with similar interests.
Here are some more tips for applying this technique.
Grouping Faculty Based on Interest
Find professors with very similar research interests. The level of customization will reduce when you have faculty members with similar interest as you will be able to convey the same research interests in your first paragraph. It also helps when you are reading their works, as you may find intersections and new ideas you could use across board to propose your research questions. You can also group based on where you met them. Say you attended a virtual or in-person event, like an academic conference where you connected with a number of potential faculty members.
Divide your essay into generic and customised areas
You will need to determine which areas should be generic and which should be customized in your essay. Use email template and placeholder tools that will allow you to divide your essay into customizable and generic areas to organize them.
Make sure you research the faculty before you contact them
You should not escape this one. You will still need to do the groundwork of checking out the person you wish to contact before reaching out to them.
Keep refining and modifying your templates
The fact that you use templates does not mean you will not refine them as you move along in your search. You should always double-check that the template aligns with the person you wish to contact.
Remember that the era of cold emails is over, and people are getting too busy to not be distinguished from the crowd.
Tell us what has worked and hasn’t worked so far in contacting potential supervisors for grad school. Please drop your questions and share your experience with reaching faculty members via email.