International applicants seeking assistantship/admission: please do not send me emails blindly without reading this Every day I receive emails from international candidates for information, or advice, and especially requesting financial assistance. Unfortunately, I delete most of them without even reading them carully. I get so many irrelevant emails that cannot reply to each. Extremely rarely has one caught my attention. Please do not send me emails without reading this first. I am only interested in corresponding to candidates who are exceptional, and have a strong interest and experience in my immediate area of specialization, and I highly prer ones with a Master's degree. For your benit, I have included in this page, some writing tips, when corresponding to me, and perhaps also in writing to other faculty members in US Universities. When corresponding, do not mention your age/date of birth, your gender, nationality etc. These are superfluous information. [b]I am NOT interested in: Extra-curricular activities, performance in high school or bore, TOEFL scores, hobbies, software skills, UNIX/ORACLE/NOVELL certification and other items unrelated to my research area*. [b]I am SOMEWHAT interested in: Your awards/academic honors, academic records, GPA, GRE score (2200+), experience. [b]I am HIGHLY interested in: Your publications, research interests (have supporting evidence for your claim, don't just claim you are interested, supporting evidence for your claim, don't just claim you are interested, unless you actually have done some work in the area). [b]*(Incidentally, I do not know what NOVELL or Microsoft certification are. Research is more concerned with things like advanced mathematical skills, creativity etc. Too much software skill actually may even count negative in my group). [b][b]Information I CANNOT provide [b]1. Chances of getting assistantship in the department (other than my own available research grants - I do not have any right now, although not very likely, it may change in future). [b]2. Deadlines for assistantship/admission. [b]3. Any information on admission procedures and policies. [b]4. Minimum GRE/TOEFL scores required. [b]5. How to get application forms. [b]6. Whether a decision for assistantship or admission was made. [b]7. Other faculty who would be interested in a prospective student's background (you can easily see faculty research interests from the department website). [b]8. When an admission/assistantship decision will be made. [b]9. Any other information, other than that below, The only information I CAN provide [b]1. Compatibility of your interests/background with my own research area. [b]2. Possibility of getting research support from my own (not departmental) funds. I am always trying to get external funding for my research projects. [b]3. Possible research areas you could work on with your background, with me. I know how interested some students are in coming to the USA for a higher degree. I have written this as a usul guide for you. I have also written this to let prospective international students try and focus their own forts properly, instead of wasting their energy sending me emails. Here are two sample letters. A sample letter that will never get the candidate an assistantship with me: [b]Unwanted email [b]Respected sir, [b]I am very interested in going to the US for higher studies. I am seeking admission and financial assistance in your esteemed University. I am very interested in artificial intelligence and computer architecture. I have programming experience in C++, C and Java. I am also familiar with several software packages in the Windows environment (MS Word, Excel Spreadsheet etc.). I also have networking certification from NOVELL. My GRE score is 2050, and I got 99 percentile in the TOEFL exam. [b]I request you to spare a few moments from your precious time to go through my attached resume. [b]Sir - if you are kind enough to offer me assistantship, I promise to work very hard for you. I have a very good academic record since primary school. [b]Alternately, can you tell me what are my chances of getting assistantship from your department? [b]Can you kindly inform me about the last dates for Summer term 2002 bore which I can apply? [b]Thank you for your valuable time, [b]Yours obediently [b]ABC My comments: I simply delete these emails, which I consider garbage. The person seems to be too obsequious and flattering. In the emails that I do read (occasionally), I do a first scan for keywords like "precious", "respected" etc. deleting the email if I find one. Obviously the person is not professional enough. The person is interested in artificial intelligence and computer architecture - these are quite unrelated areas, making me think that he is trying to cover as many professors as possible to get aid from any possible source. Besides, he does not have anything in support of his claim (about his interest in artificial intelligence). He emphasizes on his software skills, making me think that his goal is to get a programming job in the US and higher studies is only to allow him access to the US job market. His GRE scores are OK, but not exceptional. He asks me to tell him what his chances of getting an assistantship are, elsewhere in the department. I have absolutely no way of finding that out, and even if I knew, I would not bother to reply back. He also asks me to give him information about summer deadlines. How am I supposed to know that? (I would typically expect that this information should be available from the would typically expect that this information should be available from the University web site, or from the grad school, but my guess is as good as yours.) Finally, this letter is too generic. He probably uses exactly the same format for hundreds of email letters to various professors throughout the country, leaving no stone uncovered. I receive hundreds of email like this. Regretfully, I cannot answer everyone, and these applications do not interest me at all. I have even received emails from students asking me to evaluate their chances of getting admission, based on their GRE scores, TOEFL scores and GPA. Here is an example: [b]Highly undesirable email [b]Respected Sir, [b]I am applying to a few US Universities for higher studies, including your esteemed University. [b]I am a fourth year electronics engineering student at XYZ University, India. My undergraduate GPA is 3.2/4.0. I obtained 2000 in my GRE India. My undergraduate GPA is 3.2/4.0. I obtained 2000 in my GRE examination (V: 500, Q: 800, A: 700), and 456 in the TOEFL. [b]Can you spare some valuable time to assist me in determining what my chances are for assistantship in your department and in other Universities? [b]I will appreciate any help from you. [b]Sincerely, [b]PQR My comments: This letter is at least as bad as the previous one. It too looks excessively obsequious and unprofessional with words like 'respected' and 'esteemed'. I will not respond to queries like this, even if I could possibly "detemine their chances". As I mentioned earlier, my mailbox gets flooded with these queries such as this each week, and I have no time to respond. But more significantly, I do not have the slightest way of knowing this, not even in KSU E
ECE department, leave aside other Universities. You are much better positioned to do that, based on your own peers' experiences. Take an example, how much information can you, as a student, give me about the criterion for promotion from associate professor to full professor in your University? Likewise, I have no idea what policies graduate schools in the US follow to admit/denying admission to prospective students. I barely know the format of the GRE exam, leave aside TOEFL. I do not have the slightest idea how to distinguish between a 'good' TOEFL score and a 'bad' one. Besides, I know that most Indian Universities do not follow a GPA system. His "GPA" is most likely inaccurate, obtained by applying some arbitrary conversion formula devised largely to scale up the overall percentage score. Use GPA to fill in the official admission form, if you please, since there is no space for marks, but do not give that information to me unless your University actually follows a 4 point GPA system. (Unfortunately, I cannot distinguish a good percentage score from an average one either.) I have even received letters with personal items unrelated to the profession - something which I consider to be highly negative (examples - "I looked at your family pictures in your homepage", or "I am from the same part of the country as you are" etc.). Now, here is a letter that would DEFINITELY attract my attention: [b]Excellent email [b]Dear Prof. Das, [b]I am applying to KSU (amongst other places) for a Ph.D., and I am very interested in your research areas. I would like to explore the possibility of doing my research with you, with financial support. [b]One possible area that would interest me a lot is in applying Tikhonov regularization to your problem in computational neuroscience, since I understand that neural data can be very noisy, and yet sparse. Alternately, [b]I am also interested in applying evolutionary algorithms to your genetic neural network parameter estimation. One of my other interests in in parallel processing. Are you considering parallel implementations for any of your optimization/estimation algorithms? Considering that the projects that you list in your web site would probably be very computationally intensive, that may be a worthwhile strategy to pursue. [b]I presented a paper entitled "Hybrid Gradient Descent Based Training of Probabilistic Recurrent Networks" in the International Conference on Neural Networks and Image Processing, Bangalore, last year. It is a reviewed publication. If have attached a copy of the article in pdf format. If you have available funds, and are interested in my application please [b]let me know soon. [b]XYZ My comments: This is a straightforward letter from someone with a genuine interest in my area. He is an exceptional candidate. He has evinced a keen desire to learn, and already has considerable mastery over my area of research. If I have any funding available, I would dinitely try my very BEST to get this person. This person may have an MS degree, while many applicants have only a BS degree. Here is a letter from a fresh undergraduate that looks very good: [b]Good email [b]Dear Dr. Das, [b]I recently applied the Ph.D. program in your department at KSU. [b]I looked at your home page, and your research areas were very interesting to me. I also read your research article that appeared recently in the journal "Signal Processing & Data Mining (note: this is a hypothetical journal "Signal Processing & Data Mining (note: this is a hypothetical journal)". I am very interested in your idea of applying independent component analysis to data mining. My own undergraduate project was in a closely related area and should be of interest to you. It was entitled "Applications of LVQ algorithms to speech recognition". Furthermore, I recently joined XYZ labs in Mumbai, (India) as an assistant scientist, and I my work is in designing neural network algorithms for knowledge discovery applications. [b]My GRE score was 2270, and I also took the GRE engineering subject test with a score of 96 percentile. I stood first in the the University in my batch (245 students). [b]Please consider me for any financial assistantship that you may have. I have attached a 5 page postscript format curriculum vitae. [b]Sincerely, [b]ABC My comments: I would try to get some funding for this candidate, although I strongly prer students with an M.S. degree. I recommend that fresh BS students who wish to apply, do the following: Decide on what area you are really interested in. Be very specific about what you want. Then first spend a few months researching material in that area. Look at conference and journal papers. If you do not have access to a decent library, then surf the web, and read as much on the subject as [b]possible. Even try and present a paper at a national conference, perhaps with a University professor there. When you are finally ready, start getting information about faculty interested in that area and write to them only. This is the only way you ever stand a chance for a research assistantship. I think it is very unlikely that a professor in the USA would take you blindly based on your GRE scores, your undergraduate record and a few letters of recommendation. If you are not willing to do this, then focus on a teaching assistantship only. For teaching assistantships, you should not even be sending emails to various professors, but only to the department chair/graduate coordinator/graduate advisor. Individual faculty members have no control whatsoever in deciding how teaching assistantships are going to be awarded. For these positions, your undergraduate performance, GRE scores, etc. count a lot. Here is a letter from someone from a country where English is not spoken: [b]Another excellent email [b]Dear Dr. Das, [b]I studied at a famous University in Beijing, PRC in Electronics Engineering in 2001. I intention is to travel to US for a Ph.D. I find your area very interesting such as neural networks and genetic algorithm. I published a paper in fuzzy logic after research in my university. This paper is in Chinese. But I submitted another English paper for a conference last month. [b]It is application of neurofuzzy system to 3 joint robot arm control. My GRE score is 2100, (Quantitative 800, Analytical 800, Verbal 500). [b]I am very interested in Kansas State University. Do you have assistantship available in next semester to teach a Ph.D. student in neural network application to pattern recognition or sensor fusion? Please see my resume if I am suitable for you.[b]Thank you, [b]JKL This letter looks exceptional. I receive many letters from candidates from Asian countries where English is not emphasized. That is no consideration from my point of view, as long as you qualify for grad school. A lack of English should not discourage someone from applying. Students from several countries with bare English capabilities have known to be highly successful in the US because they are so hard working and sincere that they more than compensate for this minor disadvantage. I will only care about things such as your mathematical skills, and research record. This person's GRE analytical and quantitative scores are excellent. But most important is the fact that he has two publications, even if one is in Chinese. I will give credit to this student for writing a paper in English, even if he is not fully comfortable in that language. It shows how dedicated the person is. I certainly would like to have this person in my research team. I have heard that there are agencies which send out emails for you to various professors in the USA. In fact I and my colleagues have received exactly the same generic email several times, with only the names changed. Such an email can only have a NEGATIVE impact on your chances. That is a total waste of money and a very bad idea. [b]Finally, don't be discouraged if you cannot make it to the USA. With economies in India and China skyrocketing, I expect in about a decade, the job prospects in these countries could even be better than in the USA. Even today, I am pleasantly surprised to see engineers, software personnel, doctors, scientists and managers in India enjoying more or less the same lifestyle that one does in the USA (and probably better off than their counterparts in some other countries like Britain). I am sure the standard of living in some other Asian countries, such as China is excellent too. economies in India and China skyrocketing, I expect in about a decade, the today, I am pleasantly surprised to see engineers, software personnel, doctors, scientists and managers in India enjoying more or less the same lifestyle that one does in the USA (and probably better off than their counterparts in some other countries like Britain). I am sure the standard of living in some other Asian countries, such as China is excellent too. [b][b]One last word. If, and only if you get my attention (which is extremely rare), I will keep in touch with you, push hard to increase your interest, try my best and do EVERYTHING possible to get you. Currently I do not have much funding available (or have not updated this page), but I hope that will change soon.
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