How to Email a Professor
About Joining Their Lab

It’s that time of year again: graduate admissions season.

Every year, I receive many emails from prospective graduate students interested in joining my lab. Some catch my attention. Many do not. This doesn’t mean the students are not a fit, but their emails haven’t given me enough to recognize that fit and look further. In the end, it’s a loss for both of us.

The difference is not fancy formatting or perfect prose. It is much simpler: Has the student made a convincing case that they are genuinely interested in my lab and the type of supervision I can provide? Is there something in their email that suggests they could succeed in a graduate program? Do they show the potential to conduct independent research?

We professors get it. Students are trying to avoid mounting application costs while also looking for an edge in a competitive admissions process.

This matters even more in the age of AI. It has never been easier to generate a polished email that sounds professional while saying almost nothing.

So, how should you email a professor about a graduate position? Here are my answers to some common questions. I recognize that different people are looking for different things. I’m offering my perspective, which I suspect is shared by many other professors.

This is meant to be a living document. Fellow professors: do you approach this differently? Add your perspective in Margin Notes, especially where you disagree. Students’ questions and experiences are welcome too. Notes submitted to the author are moderated, and approved notes will be made public. I’m always looking to learn from others.

Your goal is not to convince a professor to admit you based on one email.

Your goal is to make them curious enough to open your CV, look at your work, or arrange a conversation.

Make it easy for the professor to answer three questions:

Think of the email as opening a door, not closing a deal.

Don’t start by targeting institutions. Start by identifying professors whose research resonates with your interests.

In computer science, one starting point is CSRankings.org, where you can explore faculty publication activity in particular research areas.

Use CSRankings as a discovery tool, not a measure of supervisor quality or fit. Publication activity cannot tell you how someone mentors students or whether their lab is the right place for you.

Choose the areas that interest you, look for active researchers, and then explore their personal and lab webpages, and recent papers.

I do, others may ignore them entirely.

But professors receive a lot of email, and prospective-student emails are competing for attention with everything else in the inbox.

Like everyone else, a professor's email time is limited. Most do not have an administrative assistant to wade through mountains of emails. Email competes with the time they spend supporting their own students. The question is: how do you differentiate yourself among the many generic, AI-generated, templated emails?

You don’t need a clever subject line or an elaborate introduction. You need to quickly give me a reason to keep reading.

Do your homework.

Start with the professor’s webpage. What does their lab work on? Are they accepting students? Have they provided instructions for prospective students? What have they published recently?

In my case, I direct students to an Expression of Interest Form to express their interest in joining my group and provide updated background information. It gives me a centralized place to periodically review prospective students and give each submission proper attention.

Check whether your question is already answered on my webpage. That leaves more room in your email to explain your interests and ask something specific.

There is nothing wrong with contacting multiple professors. Definitely do not CC the entire department, as some occasionally do. You are looking for a graduate supervisor, and finding a good match matters.

You are putting an important part of your training and career in an advisor’s hands. The goal is not simply to get any graduate position, but to find one where you can learn from your advisor, grow as a researcher, and thrive. I’ve been fortunate to have many amazing supervisors and mentors in my career, and I still lean on them when I need help.

But there is a difference between contacting several professors whose research genuinely interests you and sending the same email to 100 faculty members.

Professors can tell.

You are not trying to maximize the number of emails you send. You are trying to maximize the chance that the right professor reads your email and thinks:

This person might be a good fit for my lab.

That doesn’t mean this is the optimal way to approach the admissions process. It reminds me of stories about famous tech entrepreneurs who dropped out of university. That’s survivorship bias. For most, a well-crafted, personalized email has a better chance of catching a prof’s attention. There’s a lot of luck involved in this process, and it’s best to put yourself in the right place for that luck to strike.

Keep it formal at first. “Dear Professor [Last Name]” is a good starting point. Use a less formal form of address when invited to do so.

I tend to be informal with my students, but that is not a general rule. Let the professor set the tone.

Personalized does not mean:

Dear Professor [NAME], I am deeply impressed by your groundbreaking research in [RESEARCH AREA].

Changing two fields in a template is not personalization.

Tell me why you are contacting me.

Maybe one of my group’s recent papers connects to a project you worked on. Maybe my lab works on a problem you have been thinking about. Maybe you have experience that would be particularly relevant to something we are doing.

You don’t need a paragraph praising my research. One specific, thoughtful sentence can be much more effective.

If it genuinely interested you, absolutely. But don’t pick a random paper from the professor’s publication list. A passing reference does little to show why the research interests you.

Students sometimes reference a paper I worked on in 2015. That was over a decade ago! In arXiv years, that’s a century. My research interests have moved on.

Focus on recent work and where it might lead. What questions remain open? What could we explore together?

“I read your paper on X and found it fascinating” tells me very little. Tell me what caught your attention, how it connects to your work, or what new question it raised. One specific observation shows that you actually engaged with the research.

Give me the information that helps me answer one question:

Why might this person be a good researcher in my lab?

That could include research experience, a thesis, an interesting project, publications, relevant industry experience, open-source contributions, or other evidence that you can tackle difficult problems.

Ultimately, I am looking for signals that you can succeed in graduate research. Those signals might come from advanced courses you have taken, research experience, work experience, or other parts of your background. But the strongest ones are those that connect in some way to the research being done in my lab.

What if you don’t have research experience? Not everyone has had the same opportunities. Previous research can provide a strong signal, but it is only one of many I take into account. Relevant coursework, projects, and work experience can also help show your potential.

You don’t need to tell me everything you have ever done.

This is an email, not your autobiography.

Highlight the things that matter for this particular lab and let your CV provide the details.

Definitely not. Be honest about your experience and what you have accomplished. Exaggerated claims have a way of unraveling during the interview process.

More importantly, a successful graduate student-supervisor relationship depends on trust. Starting that relationship by misrepresenting yourself is not a good foundation.

Years ago, I received an email from a student claiming multiple undergraduate internships with well-known people in my research community. I was excited at first. But after contacting those professors for more information, I learned that they had never worked together. There had only been a few email exchanges. Needless to say, I did not further pursue this student.

Short. Very short.

If answering those three questions requires scrolling through several screens of text, your email is probably too long.

Don’t simply copy and paste your general statement of purpose into the email.

Respect the reader’s time.

Of course, if your email piques my interest, I immediately go to the attached CV.

Make it easy for me to learn more about you.

If you have a personal webpage, Google Scholar profile, GitHub repository, or other relevant work, include links where appropriate.

Sure. A transcript is another piece of evidence I can review if your email catches my attention. Follow any instructions the professor provides about attachments.

Strong grades can certainly help, particularly when they are in relevant courses.

But graduate research is not simply an extension of taking courses. I am also looking for evidence of curiosity, independence, technical ability, persistence, and the ability to think about open-ended problems.

Your email should help me see the potential researcher behind the transcript.

Of course.

But be careful.

AI has made it incredibly easy to produce emails that are grammatically perfect, professionally worded, and completely forgettable.

In fact, polished generic writing is becoming less informative precisely because it is now so cheap to produce.

Don’t obsess over finding the perfect words at first.

Once you have written a genuine letter in your own words, an LLM can help improve its flow. Start with your own ideas and reasons for reaching out, then use it to help you express them more clearly.

Use AI to help you communicate your ideas clearly. Don’t use it to manufacture interest you don’t have or understanding you haven’t developed.

AI can improve your writing. It cannot do your homework for you.

The strongest signal in your email is increasingly not polish.

It is specificity.

Personally, I prefer that you don’t follow up. That is my preference, not a universal rule: other professors may welcome one polite follow-up. Check their instructions and respect any preference they state.

Professors are busy. They may not have funding. They may already have enough students. They may be travelling. They may simply have missed your email.

I fund all my students at a level that allows them to focus on their research. That means my funding can only support a limited number of students, as much as I would like to take on more.

I keep my lab relatively small, with five or six graduate students at a time, so I can work closely with each of them.

Even when a professor has the funding and time to take on another student, they may simply not see a strong fit with their lab.

No response is frustrating, but repeatedly emailing is unlikely to change the outcome.

Give the right professor a concrete reason to want to know more about you.

Make it count and good luck!