Throughout high school and college, your teachers and professors are the people who connect you with new opportunities and vouch for you through letters of recommendation. You could go through all of high school without ever speaking with your teacher one-on-one because they get to know you just from seeing you in class. In undergrad, your professors have larger classrooms and less time to meaningfully interact with each student. You can talk to your professor before or after class, but that time is limited.
Emailing a professor is how you initiate a relationship. Most students have a hard time with this because their emails never get answered. The purpose of this article is to give you a framework for writing emails that get answered.
How professors think
Most professors at undergraduate institutions want to help and teach students. This is why they chose to be a professor as opposed to doing things that make more money. Some professors are more interested in working with brilliant already-researchers whereas other professors are interested in budding researchers. So in general, most are actually happy to get an email from someone they are looking to help.
The problem is they likely receive many emails from people who aren't interested in them specifically. AI-generated emails are easy to spot.
Crafting the email
I had a student ask me if I could look over his templates. After I saw them, I quickly realized why nobody was responding. A template, by definition, contains content that can be reused. When a professor reads an email written from a template, they can tell there are many phrases that are so generic they could be used with anyone.
- Keep your email short.
- Avoid using templates.
- Avoid using ChatGPT.
- Give your availability in your email.
- Do not send your resume.
The email that was never answered
Not every email you send will be answered and that's alright. Sometimes professors are actually just busy and they may be as disorganized at life as you. However, just like you, it's likely they did see it and never got around to answering.
Absence of an answer is an answer. If they never respond to your follow up emails, this means they are not excited to work with you and therefore you should keep looking for a mentor. Trying to convince someone who just isn't that into you never works. So take your energy and excitement and search for someone who is just excited about you as you are about them.