At the start, I will say that other supervisors will feel differently. While this pertains to me, and I don’t think it is completely unusual, don’t assume faculty members are a monolith. However, 19 out of 20 grad-school applicant emails I receive can’t be considered, and many are mere spam that won’t even get an acknowledgment.
The most important thing is to approach the right person. You know those authors you are citing in your papers? For recent publications, anyway, those authors are often professors somewhere, and if you are citing them, you’re likely working in an area relevant to their research program. Look there first. Of course, that might be on another continent. If you are a seriously competitive grad school applicant, this might be the most exciting stage of your life if you are completely open to follow your research interest wherever it leads you.
Suppose you have chosen a grad program on the basis of their coursework offerings or the university location being in a place you already live, or would like to go on a student visa. Fair enough. You are searching for supervisors in a limited list. Read the list carefully. Now, do not just read the main department faculty listing page. If someone looks interesting on that page, go to their personal page or, if they do not have one, look up their publications. (Also look at what undergraduate courses they teach: if you have never taken those courses, it would be difficult to be a teaching assistant for them, and that is one opportunity we are always keen to give to grad supervisees.)
For example, my listing says “human factors”, “occupational health and safety”, “safety engineering”, “systems or process safety”, because those are things I do in our undergraduate program. If you click my name, it takes you to my department bio, which opens with “Her research focuses on human factors engineering in designed public spaces and activities, particularly in the domain of amusement attractions, and her projects include accident and error analysis, task demand modelling, and interface design, pertaining to guests, operators, and inspectors.” There is also an accordion menu on the same page for “research” which lists as research projects: “Human factors engineering tools for amusement attraction design and evaluation, Human factors design tools for theme park attractions, Determining participation eligibility for amusement rides, Developing aids for investigating and recording rider error in amusement ride accidents and similar environments.”
The research projects repeatedly and exclusively mention amusement rides and attractions. Even if I was interested in a grad thesis about construction health and safety, or human error analysis in utility work, or the workload implications of disability participation in the healthcare sector or the relevance of accessibility to population public health, I lack the attention capacity to be on top of all the issues that would be relevant to those topics. I may be a great committee member, to bring some unique knowledge or insight, but am not suitable as the supervisor.
Tell me why applicants write “I read one of your papers, [papername] and it was so interesting, so anyway, here is my CV and I would like to join your research group.” No. I am not opening that attachment. Cybersecurity concerns aside, it is not my job to search for hints and clues that a particular applicant might contain some relevant aptitudes. The applicant needs to use the body of the email to make their case. If the positions were reversed and I wanted to join your research group, I would explain what I thought I could contribute to enhance your success. I would explain my prior academic coursework, including knowledge and methodology, to show a good grounding on any needed skills not provided in the courses in your graduate program.
How does an applicant know what knowledge and methodology they need to describe to make a strong approach to a potential supervisor? They should read not just the titles, but at least the abstracts, and possibly the entire text of the relevant papers in the supervisor’s bio, including the methods used.
Do not copypaste the titles of the prof’s papers into your email. It looks like a mailmerge, especially in my case if the body of the email goes on to use words like “mitochondria”. I know that’s the “powerhouse of the cell” but that’s it. If that is your experience and interest, you are absolutely emailing the wrong person if you’re reaching out to me. If you just want to show that you were a reliable undergrad research assistant and it happened to be in a mitochondria lab, fair enough – a couple of the sentences of the email could explain your pivot and its relevance to my program.
Bear in mind, research evolves and researchers’ interests evolve. I enjoy the walk down memory lane when I receive a letter exuding passion about the title of a paper from a regional conference in 1999 on which I was not even the first author. However, I’m not still working on that project 25 years later. Look at what I say I am currently doing, and my recent publications and talks. How recent? Consider how many years you plan to spend in the grad program. No older than that many years ago.
Speaking for myself, I want to see you describe one or more research questions you believe that (a) have not been researched (as shown in a bit of literature you could cite), (b) should be researched (as shown in at least a rhetorical argument establishing a rationale, if not citing any literature), and (c) you personally expect to have the ability to research once you acquire some of the knowledge the grad program will facilitate you to learn. Those questions should have some relevance to what I’ve been doing recently.
This is not a contract to be signed in blood. It is a work sample to show that you are able to independently able to define and plan a research project. A supervisor could ask you to pivot to align closer to their lab agenda, or ideally they could supervise what you want to do, while you also help on some of their research underway.
If you’re proposing to explore a topic where I have contributed, your statement should definitely include my contributions in literature you cite, not to flatter me, but to show how you plan to use my past work to build your future work. If you plan to ignore it, fine, but it makes no sense to approach me to supervise you.
Some graduate supervisors will accept a student based on some undergraduate course background, and assign them a thesis topic. That is not how I roll. I prefer the approach of an academic mentor who once told me that his students must come up with their own thesis topics; any topic he gives them was fundamentally his research. They get experience from that, and can write papers with him, but a thesis is meant to show research ability, and part of research is not just executing the steps and writing it up, but also deciding what to study, and how.
I can tell you I am more likely to agree to supervise or co-supervise someone outside my direct research interest if they can communicate that they have their research agenda on lock, and just need a sounding board, occasional editorial guidance, and someone running interference with academic roadblocks.
For students who think this is hopelessly infeasible, and expects too much of undergraduates aspiring to grad school, I’ll take another walk down memory lane. I served a few years on a scholarship committee for disabled students seeking funding to pursue grad school in some field related to disability and rehabilitation. Despite severe barriers to physical or sensory access to university resources, and in some cases, barriers to both, those statements of interest were solid. I read articulate reviews of the literature with dozens if not hundreds of peer-reviewed sources cited, detailed experimental designs, broken down by phase of the proposed study, and plans for dissemination of their results. This was a scholarship program, but most were applying to grad school at the time of application, and from the scholarship applications, it was clear that every single one of those applicants was a strongly competitive grad school applicant.
The same principles apply to your Statement of Interest on the graduate application portal. The “statement of interest” is about what you want to study, why it should be studied, how it could be studied, given what the program of study will add to your existing knowledge. It’s fair enough to explain what draws you as a person to a field, or write about the “light bulb moment” where you saw your question walking around unanswered in the everyday world, and you were inspired you to apply to find a way to answer that question. It’s good to personalize your application. However, the sincerity of your interest is not the issue, so the Statement does not become more competitive by adding more rhetoric, more passion, or more personal anecdotes. This document is to see how you explain the scholarly appeal of the topic(s) you are interested in, and why it is interesting to academia, not just to you.
