My friend Krishnendu Mukherjee (1st Year Ph.D. student at the University of Notre Dame) has some interesting tips to add to my previous posts. Please go through them before reading this one.
- Mailing the prof is a viable option but is not an efficient one (however if it works, this is probably the best indicator of funding). I would first suggest to shortlist the department’s profs based on your area of interest and then send them a quick mail – just in a couple of lines what you did and why you would be an ideal candidate for his/her group. Most often, they are incredibly busy to respond to long emails and hence this is a better strategy. However, at best expect a response between (25% to 50%).
- At least a few of the professors (who are interesting) should have vacancy: For example, if you are applying to a particular school and even though there are 3 to 4 people in your field (potential advisors) but none of them has a clear vacancy (this means you have not been able to establish any definite indicator of funding through mailing them, websites, department news or by any other means) while, a similarly ranked or even lower school has at least 2/3 profs taking students then you should apply to the latter. This is very important since a potential P.h.D. student can apply to only a limited number of schools and so you must be sure that at each school in your radar has a certain number of vacancies.
- Google Scholar: This is a very underrated tool and a highly useful metric to check if the Prof you are interested in, is actively doing research or not. Many times senior prof’s webpages gives us an impression that they are involved in something but in a few of the cases (by any means not a minority), people have left active research. In the google scholar page, however, you find their recent publications; check if those papers are indeed a product of their lab (often senior profs collaborate with other but no students of there have been doing any of that work). If you find that, yes the prof has published new research with the first author as his/her student, this would provide good confidence that he could take students in the future. Also, you can mail those graduate students too for funding inquiries.
- US news international graduate students ratio: (if you happen to be an international student then this is very imp).
Some universities take fewer international students (like UC system, IVY leagues, and most private universities) while others are more open toward them. US news website shows this data and can help you decide whether that university is too competitive or not.
I hope this helps. If you want to get in touch, you can find Krishnendu at:
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishnendu-mukherjee-26330552
Quora
All the best for your Ph.D. application. Best wishes.
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