What do I do if a professor at a foreign university doesn't respond to my emails?

Question

I want to know about appropriate actions to take when not receiving an e-mail reply from professors after 2 to 3 weeks of sending an e-mail.

When writing my e-mails, I try to highlight questions and important points leaving other details in normal style to make the reader quickly understand what am I asking for. Additionally, I start the e-mail with Dear Professor , I conclude with a respectful salutation form and I proof read the text of the e-mails multiple times. I am sending e-mails to professors asking them for a graduation project proposal.

E-mails are sent to professors responsible for European or North American funded research projects. Professors to whom I sent e-mails are from various institutions and countries (USA, Canada, Switzerland). The same problem is faced in previous occasions when I needed to send e-mails for various purposes but I don't receive replies except for one or two times. I tried twice sending reminders after a reasonable time (one to two weeks) of sending the first e-mail but no response is received!

N.B: if it's helpful to mention, my field is not covered by any research lab and not taught in any university in my country. And this is what makes the problem more complicated!

Answer 1

Professors directly teaching might have some obligation to answer your email (some university have quality of service policies, ensuring that students receive feedback within a given number of working days), if it's related to their teaching.

Professors from partner universities might fall under the same obligations, if there is a mutual agreement. However, professors from other university have no obligation whatsoever to answer you.

Professors are usually very busy, among other things dealing with their own students, they might not have the time to deal with other students. If you are asking about a proposal and you do not receive an answer, you should assume by default that they are not interested. There is no much you can do, apart from contacting other professors, or asking your own professors to contact them.

Answer 2

I get emails like this all the time and never reply. I can't imagine that anyone would give you a positive response, and I don't think there is anything you can do that will result in you getting what you want.

I think that my policies for responding to email are pretty typical. Aside from "professional business stuff" (e.g. invitations to speak, referee requests, inquiries from the media, etc), I generally only respond to emails from strangers in the following situations.

1. Technical questions about my papers (or related things, e.g. my answers on math overflow). These always get a response, though sometimes I can take a little while if I'm particularly busy (e.g. when traveling).
2. Mathematical questions. I'll always answer these if they are close to my research interests and are at a high level, and otherwise it depends on my mood. The speed is similar to questions of type 1.
3. Questions from students at Rice. These always get some kind of response, usually very quickly (sometimes that response is a request that they come to my office and chat). I'll also usually respond to questions from students who have some kind of indirect connection with me (e.g. I'll respond to questions from students of my collaborators).
4. Inquiries about our graduate program. For specific question, I'll usually quickly respond. For things that seem more like requests to work with me, if they sound serious then they get a very short reply with a link to the webpage saying how to apply to our PhD program (and a sentence about how I don't take students until they have been accepted and passed their quals). Sometimes they sound ridiculous (e.g. someone who has an engineering background and is clearly emailing everyone they can find on the internet), and they get no response.

Other than that, I just don't have the time. I have enormous amounts of stuff that I have to do that is directly related to teaching (at Rice; I'm not paid to teach anyone else) and research. I'm sorry that you can't get help from your own university, but sadly there just isn't anything that I can do about that.

Answer 3

It sounds like you are e-mailing strangers and asking them to tell you what to do. This seems almost certain to fail.

Also, I don't know what a "graduation project proposal" is -- keep in mind that these professors don't know and don't care what the requirements of your university are. They might be willing to help you with their scientific expertise, but you should not ask them for help with anything that doesn't directly relate to what their expertise is in, or where it's not clear what exactly you are asking for.

Here is an e-mail that might get a reply.

Dear Prof. X,

I am a student at University Y where I am interested in bioinformatics. I have to complete a senior research project [... brief details]

One topic I was considering was XYZ. In particular, I was thinking I might try to investigate the effect of ABC on DEF under conditions GHI. [Note: do your own homework here, this should be something intelligent and then they might be willing to provide helpful input] I hope I can ask you two questions: In the first place, do you believe that such an approach is feasible?

If so, since University Y doesn't have much in the way of resources, do you know where I might seek guidance as I work on this?

Thank you very much.

Answer 4

Too long for comments: both the earlier answers are very apt.

The original poster's comment to the later answer reveals a misapprehension about how things work, and the relative work-load to accomplish certain things.

First, cold-calling is a bad start on anything... unless it is extremely polite, is clearly completely specific to the individual addressed E.g., I respond badly, or, simply, not at all to emails with no "greeting" whatsoever, or do not address me (politely) by name, and/or that give no indication of anything specific to me or my actual work, etc. My reasoning is that I should spend no more effort on a response than is visible in the initial email... especially if I'm being asked to do someone a favor.

Second, asking to participate in a project whose existence is unknown makes the inquiry sound very spam-y, so will invariably get a bad reaction. Already it'd be an uphill battle to get a spot on a project whose existence was known and relevant... since most likely there are more people wanting such spots than there are spots available. Again, you should "do your homework" about existing projects, and their specifics.

Third, asking for a "proposal" is asking for quite a lot, in fact. That is, a coherent, viable, state-of-the-art proposal is something that takes quite a while to craft, and has considerable value of various sorts. In many subjects, the writing-up of such is a major activity. Such things would not be donated to anyone, much less cold-callers, much less cold-callers who send "reminders".

... and this isn't "ungenerousness", it's that many academic research situations are very competitive, especially for funding, and people work full-bore to get that funding, ... leaving not a lot of energy left over to donate to unknown people.

Even if you're cold-calling, giving no or scant information about yourself (except that you're looking for participation in a project in subject X) gives the responder little ground to respond reasonably... and I, for one, am disinclined to go through several emails to extract information that should have been available up-front, etc.

In summary, there simply isn't any powerful way for you to induce responses of the sort that'd directly help you in the way you wish, understandable though your wishes are, and as unfortunate as your local situation may be. Some different path will most likely have to be taken.

Answer 5

I agree with other respondents that you cannot expect unknown professors to respond to your emails.

Could you join an online community (email list) for your area of research interest? After lurking long enough to understand its culture, could you send a post explaining your situation (being interested in the topic and having nobody to discuss it with in your country) and ask if someone would be willing to comment on your proposal? Alternately, you could send your proposal to the list (although be prepared for it to be torn to shreds). The administrator of the list may be able to advise you on what is appropriate.

Good luck!

Answer 6

As the other answers already tell you, asking for a project proposal is asking for a very big favor, such that cold calling isn't likely to work.

The following piece of information is missing from the discussion as of now, however: many established researchers receive many cold-call requests for doing an internship with them. It is common practice in some countries to have them included in the students' curricula, and thus, it is not uncommon for students to aim high and try to get one at good schools abroad. Quite often, these mails are not very well targeted and researchers getting many of them are quite quick at pressing the "delete" key here.

Your request for a thesis topic/proposal may very easily be seen to fall into this category, even if it does not! Because such a request is so uncommon, people may expect that you would be asking for a (possibly paid) internship or (paid) PhD position in the second mail, and thus may not want to risk to be embarrased that they invested time on the matter if it turns out later that their suspicion was correct. So hitting the delete button quickly is a safe course of action for them.

I second the commenter's suggestion to ask your institution to build the necessary bridges for you. Does your institution already have a scheme for spending a semester abroad? Perhaps you can consider actually doing that?

Answer 7

One additional factor which I think may be useful at least as secondary background information: This sounds a lot like you are trying to bypass the regular admission process. You should start by finding out what it takes to become a student at their Department and follow the same enrollment process as everybody else. If your background and skills are a good fit, you could find yourself in a project even as a junior student (but this is arguably a very optimistic outlook).

Answer 8

I try to be responsive as much as possible, even if I cannot help. However, if I see that the person clearly has no idea what I am working on, tags on some keywords that seem to fit my profile or similar, and I am under time pressure, I won't respond. They haven't spent the effort finding out who they are addressing, and cannot expect effort of politeness in return.

Sometimes, I get what is effectively advice request from students from another university. If they work on something I am interested in, have done good work and bring something to the table, I consider this a collaboration across institutions, and I am happy to engage in it to some extent. However, if it is clearly a supervision request with no benefit to research that I am able to productively carry out, I am not prepared to invest my department's resources (i.e. my time) for this. Supervising my local students, for which I am paid, takes precedence.

I do give, however, brief advice where I can help with a little effort. This should not be extended into a back-and-forth discussion, to not abuse the time of the responder.