Professors can, and many do, get hundreds of emails a day. For research professors in particular, answering emails can be wasting valuable grant proposal, paper writing, and lecture planning time.
So, they hit “delete.” A lot.
When you want to talk to them, that becomes a big problem. So, what to do?
- Make the Subject of your email specific. Even if you’re taking their class, they may have no idea who you are or what you could want.
- “CS 101: homework question.”
- “Request for meeting.”
- Keep it short. No one cares to hear your life story. At most, half a page. In most cases, a couple sentences to a paragraph is all that’s necessary.
- Avoid anything that resembles a form letter. If you can address it to another prof, then there’s a problem.
For the case of professors you don’t know (like ones that you’re interested in doing research with for grad school), the following additional rules apply:
- Talk about them. This goes in hand with not writing form letters. Reference a paper or two to prove that you actually know who they are.
- Include a brief introduction to who you are. I recommend doing this after the talking about them. Unless you are super famous, they have absolutely no idea what you want.
- Include a “thank you.” They bothered to read your letter rather than delete it. Show some gratitude.
As painful as it might be, you may need to wait a couple days to a few weeks for a response. If you’re writing to a professor while in their class, go to their office hours if that happens before they respond or try contacting the TA. In the case of an unfamiliar professor, just keep waiting. No one likes to come back from a conference to multiple copies of the same message.
