Getting your foot in the door: A template for cold-emails

One very powerful way of getting accepted into a program is to contact a few faculty members before submitting your application. Often, if you can convince a professor that they want you as a student, that's as good as being accepted into the program.

Here's a template for a expressing interest in working for someone:

Dear Prof. _____,

I am a [undergrad? research assistant?] at [school/company], and I am applying to the _______ PhD Program (for admission in Fall 2014). My main academic interest lies in ___________, and I am intrigued by your work. I was wondering if you would be willing to consider me for a position in your lab if I am admitted to the program. 

My CV is attached. Briefly, I graduated from _________ in [year] with a degree in [subject]. I am now [working on something relevant]. [describe research projects in a few sentences]

I read with fascination your recent report on [???], [provide some thoughts].

Please let me know if you would consider taking me as a grad student. Thanks for your time, and I hope to hear back from you.

Thank you.

Yours sincerely,
XXXX



Notes:

• Be sincere! Don't fake interest in working for someone just to get accepted into a program! I mean, how bad will it look if a faculty member speaks up for you during the admissions process, and then you change your mind about working for their lab?

• Timing: Don't do this too soon: you want the profs to remember who you are. On the other hand, don't wait till the last minute.

What's in a name? Entering your name on official documents

TL/DR: In the US, unless there are clear "last"/"family", "first", and "middle" name sections on your passport, everything but your last/family name is now your first name.

You may think writing your name is a skill you mastered when you were five, but when moving to a foreign country, figuring out what your "official" name is can be a real problem, not to mention one that could get you into serious trouble, like getting turned away at the airport!

For example, in countries where it's common to have both anglo and dialect names, someone's name could look like this:
First name: Blain
Last name: Zhen
Dialect name: Mei Li

This is what that name may look like on a passport from their country of origin:

Zhen Mei Li Blain

Totally intuitive to someone from their country, but unintelligible to an American customs officer!

When figuring out what to write down on official US government documents, such as the I20, I-9, and visa applications, unless there are clear "last"/"family", "first", and "middle" name sections on your passport, this is what has worked:

Everything but your last/family name is now your first name:

Official first name: Meiliblain
Official last name: Zhen

Yes, it looks terrible, how they've butchered your beautiful name like that, but this will save you a lot of trouble explaining why the name on your I-9 doesn't match the name on your passport.

Schools are usually more lenient about what you put on your school documents. As a result, I have about five different names, depending on context:

Official US government documents (DMV, SSN, F1, I-20...): Meiliblain Zhen
University ID (and what my friends call me): Blain Zhen
Name on passport from country of origin: Zhen Mei Li Blain
When I publish (to distinguish myself from all the other Blain Zhens): Blain M. Zhen
What my grandparents call me: Mei Li

And people wonder why I have an identity crisis...

More interview tips - from a prof! How to make the best use of your interview time

Today I was lucky enough to hear a professor speak about his experience interviewing students and potential hires.

I guess I'd never really thought about it, but I'd always imagined or assumed that professors were 1)omniscient 2) endowed with endless enthusiasm and stamina 3) knew all the right questions to ask.

Turns out, prof says, this is a common misconception. They are just as tired at the end of the interview circuit as the interviewees. And no one tells them how to conduct interviews, or what questions to ask.

The danger in that is that some faculty will either zone out, or end up spending your precious half hour of interview time talking about the weather and your pet dog.

First point: This is time you could be spending convincing your potential mentors why you are better than everyone else they talked to today. The conversation should definitely focus on why you are the best possible candidate. If you sense the conversation drifting, make sure to steer the conversation back on track.

What about those awkward silences? Here are some stock questions for you to ask profs:
- "I read this paper of yours, X et al. 2008. Could you tell me more about ______? "
You could ask them about their motivation for the study, difficulties they faced, suggest follow up studies etc. This shows them that you actually bothered to read up on their backgrounds, have given careful thought to what you would do if you were accepted, and also shows that you are actively thinking about work in your field.
- "What are you looking for in a student?" / "So if I ended up working in your lab, what do you think if I work on ______?"
These questions forces them to imagine you as their student. Days later, when they are deliberating which interviewee to accept, who do you think they will consider more seriously: the one they imagined hard at work in lab, bringing them publications, or the guy who talked about surfing for half an hour (this actually happened)?

Plus, here's a sample thank you email I sent after graduate school interviews.

Interview etiquette: thank you notes

Here's a sample thank you email I sent after graduate school interviews.

Dear Dr. _____,

Thank you for meeting with me today. I enjoyed talking with you, and I was very impressed by the faculty and graduate students of the ________ program at ________ University. In addition to the fact that the faculty interests match my own very strongly, I also feel the program structure is the best and most suitable for me out of all the graduate programs I have seen. Because of this, I would like to express my strong interest in coming to ________ for my graduate studies. Once again, I appreciate the time you took to interview me, and I hope to see you again in the coming Fall.

Regards,
B

Dropbox - plus how to get oodles of space

Once upon a time, I relied on a thumbdrive to bring work home from lab (or if I forgot my thumbdrive, I'd email it to myself).

It was a nightmare. I had multiple copies of files everywhere, and I never knew which was the correct, most up-to-date version. I'd frequently forget where I put my thumbdrive, and worry about losing it.

Then, I discovered Dropbox.

Dropbox is like my little thumbdrive that I can never lose, that works wherever I can connect to the internet. Dropbox folders work exactly like regular folders. I now edit my files on my home computer, then go to lab and just continue working on the same files without having to do a thing in between. No plugging in drives, no checking email, nothing! It's just there waiting for me!

At first, I scoffed at its pathetic 2gbs of space. But then I discovered a few ways to expand storage space (up to 16gb, I believe):

1) Get a friend to refer you (+250mb). This instantly gives you 250mb, and gives your friend some extra space as well.

If you don't have friends using dropbox, you can use this link :) Why no, I don't have an ulterior motive in asking you to sign up with that link! But seriously, I will appreciate the extra space :P

2) Go to the dropbox "Getting started" page (make sure you're logged in) and "free space" and follow the steps on those pages.

3) Attention students!! Go to dropbox.com/edu and get double credit for referrals. And your friends laughed at you for staying in school!

4) Refer people. Roll in your heaps of free space.


For my next work hacks post, I'll talk about awesome/free alternatives to Endnote. Till next time!
-B

food-bot: the free food finder

New category: campus hacks!

Last week I stumbled upon this nifty webpage, food-bot.com



Though there are currently a limited number of universities with active food-bot networks, it will be interesting to see if this site catches on and expands.

When you select your university, you're presented with a calendar view of all the free food events of the upcoming month. Clicking on each event gives you the standard information you might need such as the venue, organization, food type, etc. In addition to that, I feel this is one of their more ingenious features:


There's an awkwardness rating. Might come in handy especially if you're a White male gate-crashing the Women of Color Society Annual General Meeting.

Anyway, if you try this out, share your stories/let me know what you think!

On the other side: What I learned about applications by being on the admissions committee

As part of my graduate program, students are asked to serve on admissions committees in their second year. Upon emerging from our admissions meeting, one of my fellow first-time application reviewers told me that she was shocked:

“Did you know that professors had to fill out so much about you when recommending you for graduate programs?”

One of my profs had made me fill out my own recommendation in college, so I knew what was involved, but unless you too have very trusting profs (with better things to do!), there really is no way to realize that in addition to writing a letter, profs are given lengthy lists of questions and are made to rate each student along a large number of dimensions.

Instead, I was more shocked by what the faculty considered important when it came to deciding who to invite for an interview. Factors I thought were important were totally disregarded, and things that I glazed over were the deciding factor that in some cases caused applicants to be thrown out (and probably resulted in myself being thrown out during my first attempt).
These are some of the things I learned by being on the other side of the admissions process:
- What you say about yourself -
The resume and statement of purpose were by and large the most important parts of the application. Here, we looked for signs that applicants would be able to hit the ground running and contribute to the department.
It’s no secret that relevant experience in your field helps a huge deal.
Another factor that successful applicants tended to have was a clear idea of what they wanted to do. The best applications laid out specific plans about who they wanted to work with in the department, and why they wanted to do so. Usually they would list multiple alternative plans – this is a smart move, in case the professor mentioned did not actually need a graduate student. That said…
- Faculty consults -
Consulting with individual faculty via email beforehand was an amazingly smart move. If you could get a faculty endorsement before the applications even arrived in the mail, it practically guaranteed you a spot at the interviews.

- What are recommenders asked about you? -
Obviously everyone knows that recommenders write a letter for you. But when a recommender receives a request for a letter, he is also commonly asked to address several specific things. Here’s a request I received when asked to write a letter for one of the undergraduates in a class I taught.
- Your role (employer, professor, etc.) in interactions with the applicant.
- How long you have known the applicant.
- Place the applicant into a general peer group and rate the applicant against that group. For example, is the applicant in the top 1-2%, 5%, 10%, 25%, etc.? Please justify the ranking.
- The applicant’s strengths, weaknesses, and potential as a (role).
- Why the applicant would be a strong candidate for the (program) in particular.
- How strongly would you recommend this candidate? 1) strongly recommend 2) recommend 3) recommend with reservations 4) not recommend?
The majority of letters we received were full of praise for the applicants. With strong recommendations, consistent ratings in the top 1-2%, etc.
We found that if profs had anything bad to say at all, they would be very sneaky about it, and then sugar-coat their criticisms to no end.
e.g. “X had some trouble at first, but after a few iterations finally…”
or
“Y struggled a bit at …. However, as a person, she is great to be around.”
Even if there was no outright criticism, applicants were sometimes rejected if they came across as mediocre.
In a stack of shining applications, we questioned why students were rated in the “top 10%” instead of the “top 5%” or “top 1-2%”. Yeah, it was that bad. Impress your recommenders, people!
- How much does GRE / GPA matter? -
Given how much sweat and blood (and money) we pour into achieving a high GPA/ GRE score, I thought this would weigh heavily in an applicant’s chances. But here’s what one faculty member said regarding an applicant with a high GPA/GRE, but who lacked relevant experience:
“If I wanted someone to take the GREs for me, this is who I’d hire, but…”
Here was an applicant with nearly 4.0, GRE percentiles in the high 90s, but she was wait-listed despite her book smarts, because she had nothing else on her CV that showed research aptitude.
That said, people with otherwise great CVs, but with suspiciously low GREs (especially in the sections relevant to your field, in this case people with low quantitative GRE scores were frowned upon because the research in my department is somewhat math-heavy) and GPAs (there was one person who was getting C’s or B’s in everything) were passed over. In these cases, unless the applicant had something on their CV that would explain away their poor grades (heavy involvement in extracirrculars, disability, language difficulties…), a low GPA / GRE was regarded as worthy of suspicion.
- What about extracirriculars? -
There were some amazing applicants who had founded charities and made a huge difference to their communities. There were some who had spent months abroad helping underprivileged children, or who were excellent atheletes and such. Unfortunately these factors were given a nod of approval, but subsequently ignored if the candidate did not also show similar aptitude for research.
TL;DR
After reading through this round of stellar applications, I found myself asking “how the heck did I get accepted?!” I actually asked my prof this. He answered that it sounded like I had a plan and some experience under my belt, so I looked like I would be able to start contributing immediately. Comparing this to my previous failed application, I realized the biggest thing that changed from that attempt to this one was that I gained a year of experience in a lab which used similar techniques to the people I wanted to work with, had become more well-versed in the literature, and had developed specific hypotheses I wanted to test.
So bottom line, it was the applicant who looked most like he knew what he wanted to do, whose interests were in line with those of several faculty members who needed students, and looked like he could do it, who were invited to be interviewed.
A lot of info in this exceedingly long post might have been obvious, but I guess many get too caught up in grades and stuff to realize that this boils down to a job application. Good luck!