Is it unwise to contact the professor directly before getting admitted to a program in US?

Question

In his answer of Details an applicant should include/exclude in an introductory letter to a prospective grad school adviser?, aeismail says

If the program in question is in the US, for instance, you should probably never contact the professor directly until after you've been admitted into the program in question. Since admissions decisions are handled centrally, it's just a waste of time.

Now I'm surprised with this, and I think I'm not the only one. For many times, not only in this site, but also in real-life examples in my university, I have seen that my friends get accepted through contacting professors beforehand, and those professors are helpful and willing to get you through the adcom. Recall it back, they don't go to US, but I don't think US should be an exception.

Why is it an exception? Why do the "admissions decisions are handled centrally", unlike other universities in the world, where the weight of the professors is heavier? Isn't that sorting the applications by score not good as checking their ability directly through interview? And who is the most suitable interviewer, if not the one who will advise you in the future?

Answer 1

Let me answer this question from the perspective of our school. If a school does things differently the answer you're quoting might be very appropriate, but not in our case.

Our admission decisions are made by our department, and essentially everyone is on the admissions committee - we share the load of evaluating applications. So, there could be great benefit of talking to a professor ahead of time. If one faculty member strongly desires a particular candidate, that student will generally get admitted, assuming they meet our qualifications. (Note that, as a small school, we have enough capacity to take more students than we do because we don't get tons of qualified applications. Also, we almost always have TA funding available for qualified students. But this really varies from one university to another.)

So, this establishes that, at some schools, talking to potential advisors ahead of time can be very valuable. The interest of working with a particular advisor can also (and should) go into the personal statement. I read so many personal statements that you can tell are completely generic, with different school names copy and pasted in. So, when someone says something specific about my research area, I take notice, and I think other faculty do too.

The real issue is that I get so many requests from random students to look at their CV. Many of them have very little connection to my work and are probably mass-emailing professors. This should be avoided.

@Anonymous' answer has the right idea here. A few months ago a student contacted me with a list of publications and a precise statement of interest about my work. We exchanged a few e-mails and I looked at his work. Another student tracked me down after a talk at a conference and talked to me in more detail about the work. These were both appropriate ways to contact me that may benefit the students in the future.

Answer 2

It is sometimes good to talk to professors if you have something specific and credible to say. If you've written research papers related to individual professors' research interests, by all means write and share them. If your undergraduate advisor thinks you should write your Ph.D. under Professor X, then it's usually a good idea for them to contact Professor X.

It's also usually fine to write a brief message to individual faculty members expressing your interest in the program and the hopes that you will be admitted, provided you do not ask them for any serious commitment. As a professor, I am happy to briefly write back to applicants and wish them well.

What I am not willing to do is promise them help with the application process when I don't know how strong their record is. I trust our admissions committee; if an interested student should clearly be admitted, then generally they will be.

Answer 3

The answer quoted in your question may be specific to computer science. I cannot speak for that field. In the US in other fields, however -- particularly lab-based sciences -- contacting your potential advisor in advance is nearly essential. Admissions decisions are strongly influenced by the individual faculty who will be advising the admitted students, and if no faculty member advocates for an applicant that applicant almost certainly will not be admitted to the program.

Answer 4

The advice you quote does not apply to all programs. My experience is in regards to PhD psychology programs, particularly in the clinical or developmental area. In the programs I have been familiar with, while the decision is at least nominally at the area level, generally "spots" have been allocated to specific professors (the department or area has allocated them funding to take a new grad student), or they have extramural (or other) funding to take on a grad student--so every year, there are specific labs/professors who are taking on student(s). Thus while the area/department as a whole participates in the decision, the professor who is taking on student(s) is probably going to be the most important voice in the decision.

If you submit your application without making contact with the professor to ensure that 1) they are taking students and 2) think your interests/background could potentially be a match, some professors may take it as a sign that you have not adequately done your homework. Conversely, making contact before submitting your application (at least in the programs I'm familiar with) can show your potential advisor that you are prepared, thoughtful, and proactive--provided that how you reach out is appropriate.

Please attend to Nathan S.'s advice--don't spam-contact a bunch of faculty. Do your research and make it clear in your contact WHY you hope to work with that individual specifically (e.g. they specialize in the use of a particular research method or technology you would like to learn; they focus on X topic, etc.). Definitely read some of their work before making contact, and write an email that is concise, respectful, and specific.

Answer 5

There are at least two reasons to contact a professor prior to admission. The first reason is to try to increase your chances of being admitted. (This seems to be what the quote in the question is talking about.) This may or may not be a "waste of time" depending on the admissions process in that particular department in that particular school and with that particular professor, so it's very hard to make a blanket statement. However, if you are going contact a professor like this, make sure to do so in a professional manner and be careful not to ask for too much. As the saying goes, "you never get a second chance to make a first impression". If you make a bad impression, you may be sabotaging your chances of being admitted.

The second reason to contact a professor prior to admission is to gather information. For example, is this professor even taking new advisees? If this is the only person at that school that you are interested in working with and they are not taking new students, then maybe you don't even want to apply. Even if the professor is not directly involved in admissions decisions, this can still be a good reason for early contact. But again, do so in a professional manner and avoid making a bad impression.

Answer 6

Admission based on the faculty members' propensity is totally on-board in Canada, East Asia and the Europe (especially in the Scandinavia)... Actually, That's due to a variety of reasons; First of all, the professor would gradually guarantee the maximum coherency between his research interests with the applicant's background and his/her researching atmosphere. Furthermore, the funding would considerably be taken into account based on the industrial projects, has which been acquired by the faculty members. So, they are supposed to be noticeably unrestricted to choose the best one for their own projects.

But in US, a multitude of the funding resources are still stemmed from either government or university-driven fellowships. One might contend that the direct influence of the faculty members' to select the admitted applicants would lead to the abuse, in such that they could admit the students, are who not the best among the other applicants within the selection pool. Hence, it is not surprising that the university will sustain its impact on the admissions, until it basically does provide the financial aids to the students.

On the other hand, the number of the applicants, applying into some American universities is often very noticeable; so, an efficient merit-based selection strategy could be realizable just with consideration of such central system of admission. Within recent years, the aforementioned procedure has been changed, gently, and the faculty members' feedback sounds to be effective in selection of the successful applicants in US. However, the existence of the universities, in which the selection is solely according to the faculty members' signal, is undeniable. But In my estimation, exact matching of the US system with the former approach is not, considerably, expected.

Answer 7

I am a computer science professor and I agree that this advice is not entirely correct.

It's true that you should never spam a whole bunch of professors at random asking them to look at your CV / take you on as a student. At best this is a waste of time, at worst the professor sits on the admissions committee and you make a poor first impression. I'm shocked by how many emails I get per year from students who want to study machine learning. I don't list machine learning as one of my research interests, and I've never published a paper even remotely related to machine learning. Don't waste your time.

On the other hand emailing the professor makes a lot of sense if you have a legitimate research connection with them. Perhaps you did some undergraduate research on a topic very similar to one of the prof's papers. Perhaps you met at a workshop and he told you to "get in touch when you graduate." Perhaps one of your mentors knows the prof and offered to introduce you. In these cases I say go for it -- in many institutions, if a prof really wants a student, that will weigh heavily during the admissions process.