On Emailing Professors

Applying to College
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Hey all. How would I go about emailing a professor at Columbia?
I’ve already found a professor at the department I plan to study at (CS) in a field I’m very interested in (artificial intelligence). I planned on politely contacting them to demonstrate interest for the college, and get to know some of the faculty.

I’m completely lost on what to include in the email. How do I avoid sounding generic? I want to show genuine interest because I sincerely care about AI. That being said, I don’t want to ask questions that could be found on Wikipedia.

Thanks in advance

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If there is something that you would like to talk about with the professor that is unrelated to you application, than contact them. However, contacting the professor to say that you really want to attend Columbia will not endear you to that professor, and the professor is unlikely to convey the fact that you contacted them to the Office of Admissions in any case. Aside from that, Columbia does not care about demonstrated interest.

From Columbia’s admissions website:

https://undergrad.admissions.columbia.edu/ask/contact

In short - do not contact any professors at Columbia to “demonstrate interest”.

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How did you find that professor? Read their research.

I likely would not respond to a non-admitted high school student asking me questions or trying to suck up to me.

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I agree with @2plustrio and @MWolf. I will add if you are trying to dive deeper into learning about opportunities at a particular school, you could request Admissions to connect you with a particular professor or department. This should be for you to gather more information not because you believe it will help with admissions.

Anecdotally, my D did this and was introduced to professors (and students) for Zoom sessions to learn more about the schools she was considering. During one of those, she learned about a study abroad course that really excited her. She ended up at that school and coincidentally that professor is her advisor (and her major’s department head)… and she was accepted for that study abroad this spring.

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If there is an opportunity to write about your interests in that U on the application, you can mention some examples of faculty research that excite you. Otherwise contacting the prof when you haven’t been accepted yet is premature.

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I disagree… If you plan correctly you can add that you met /talked with Professor X and use that correctly in the essay. It can be very effective of showing interest and maturity level of the student to do so. But the student should do it with genuine interest in the department and school. Many students that I know including my own kids met with professors and used it in the essays and others I have helped get accepted to said schools…

It’s all how it’s framed.

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The key is “met with” as opposed to “sent an unsolicited email”.

And we’re talking about a very popular program/major.

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But you can still have a conversation through email. Or set up a time to talk about…

Every professor actually gave great insight into their programs /schools and all had been extremely helpful.

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Unless you are applying to a PhD program, please don’t.

If you are visiting a school, take @DramaMama2021’s advice and contact admissions in advance to try and arrange a meeting. Otherwise, leave the faculty alone.

@Knowsstuff, I can read your post 2 ways, but the way that worries me is the one that says to HS students 'getting to talk to a prof can make a difference in your admissions chances the way it has for my kids & other kids I work with", and that students will interpret that as encouragement to scour college websites to get prof emails to try and get an admissions boost.

Many, possibly most, profs are happy in theory to talk to interested students- but in practice the volume of requests is already overwhelming. When I was on a university website I got more email requests for conversations from prospective PhD candidates than I could handle, nevermind 17yo HS students hoping to ingratiate themselves with me to get into their ‘dream’ college! I don’t doubt their sincerity, their passion, their interest- it is simply a matter of being overrun with their emails.

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I stand by my statements and I know some will disagree.

As examples my son was between Actuarial Science and engineering and met with both Department heads to see which direction made more sense.

My daughter met with the Department heads for her Theater Design BFA with Portfolio in hand. She’s a great interview. Accepted to 9/10 programs (went to second Lac changing majors with Presidential merit after meeting with 2 department heads that reached out to her).

Of course due to Covid it’s more difficult to meet live so…

All schools made positive comments on the meetings. Small Lacs talk and usually know someone’s on campus (sometimes).

Again, I understand what you are saying and hopefully people are genuine about it. No one wants to waste anyone’s time.

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A. Columbia does not track interest, and,
B, Columbia professors have little to nothing to do with admissions.

So there is no point in the entire exercise, except to cold contact a person and tell them that you really really really want to attend their university.

Since I have worked by now in half a dozen universities and am friends a colleagues with dozens of faculty, I’ll tell you that you are wrong.

While professors will be happy to make the time to meet with enthusiastic undergraduates and even high school students and speak about their research, advances in their fields, and even how a person ends up a colleges professor. They have little to no interest spending their time listening to some prestige-obsessed teenager go on about how they (the teenager) REALLY wants to attend the professor’s university.

Moreover, and this is important, a professor who spoke to a high school students is not likely to pick up a phone and tell admissions “Hey, you need to take this kid”. Even if they did pick up the phone, admissions would tell them to do their own job, and not to tell the AOs what they should do.

First, you son was contacting these people to obtain important information that he could not get from, say, admissions, and second, U Michigan does track interest, unlike Columbia. So this example is not really relevant.

Performing arts degrees are a VERY different kettle of fish than Columbia University. To begin with, the people who interview for performing arts programs are not AOs, but faculty. SO meeting with faculty is beneficial for admissions, and admissions are part of the job of Fine Arts faculty.

LACs are not Columbia University, and many LACs track interest. Moreover, LACs are pretty small, and professors do speak with AOs, and can “put in a good word” for an applicant.

If the OP was thinking of contacting a faculty member at Skidmore, I would say that the definitely should go ahead and do it.

Again, the point is that Columbia does not track interest, and “showing interest” does nothing to help an applicant’s case.

So this example is not relevant to the OP either.

You’re telling somebody that they should take use public transportation to go to work in Dallas, because the public transportation in Boston is a better option than driving.

PS. Contacting faculty just to learn about a college and to help you decide whether you want to attend can be a good idea, though I really like @DramaMama2021’s idea of having admissions connect you to a faculty member.

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Good post! And to clarify, my real world example was with LACs, so a different scenario than the OP.

Our decision to initiate contact through Admissions was threefold: (1) my D did not want to inconvenience faculty with unsolicited contact or make a request that would be viewed as inappropriate, (2) presumably Admissions would know professors who were willing to speak to applicants, (3) even if Admissions said that wasn’t possible there may be a subtle note that the request itself demonstrated interest. Again, this is at LACs, however, for purposes of learning more about any institution I think it would be a good approach. Just don’t do it expecting it to demonstrate interest, as MWolf explained so well.

Edit: @Knowsstuff I like the examples you provided as they may apply to other readers than the OP. I also appreciate the dialogue and sharing of opinions as it demonstrates to the OP the need to research specific institutions to understand what they are looking for. What will help with admissions at one will not necessarily help at another.

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D20 did the same thing with the schools (LACs, natch) that @DramaMama2021’s daughter did. Contacted her assigned AO to ask for more information about specific departments and/or programs. The AOs then helped D20 make the appropriate contact with those departments and D20 had several very helpful and enlightening conversations across different schools.

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CS professors, especially those who work in artificial intelligence, are among the busiest people on campus these days. There’s so much demand on their time that they likely have their administrative assistants help filter their emails. Unfortunately, that means the chance of them responding to your email is practically nil. Most of them probably don’t even personally respond to college seniors looking to enter their graduate programs, let alone some random HS student. These professors, if they’re active in research, probably have their personalized web pages listing their areas of reseach and their publications, among other things. It may be helpful to your applications if you can refer to and discuss some of them in a way that shows your interest and preparedness.

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My D reached out to some profs when we were touring because it was offered as part of the visit day. It was more to gauge if she thought the school would be a good fit for her. She learned a lot by meeting with profs.

She did email with a Michigan prof at the recommendation of the CoE folks about a specific type of research she was interested in at the time.

D found it helpful in culling her initial list. She met with profs at half the schools.

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Sorry but maybe your missing my point or I am not being very clear. Yes I know we’re talking about Columbia and they don’t track interest. But if you have a top candidate and they have made contact out of true interest in said program, NOT the school, and use that in their essay you don’t think that helps the candidate. Then my friend at the Lab school (counselor advisor) and my other friend who teaches at University of Chicago that also advises students and helps them with their essays, for the last 25 years might be wrong then. I have seen many get accepted into the Ivys including Columbia with doing this but of course who knows if this was the deciding factor. Probably not.

I don’t see it as a negative for the student and could separate that student from the pack. I am looking at this from the student side not the professors side evidently. It’s good to hear both sides of the equation.

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Exactly…

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Whether or not a school tracks demonstrated interest is irrelevant…I don’t know any that would ‘track’ a contact to a prof.

What is relevant and it’s tremendously important are the ‘Why Us?’ essays that many of the schools we are talking about on this thread have. It’s in these essays that a student should mention a prof doing research they are interested in, or a prof that they have already connected with. Of course this essay should also mention other ways the student will engage in the school’s community…courses they want to take, clubs they would join, target study abroad programs, etc. This is what applicants are being taught to do by their HS GCs, or their private college counselors, or college essay books/websites, as @knowstuff states.

Several posters have also suggested going through the AO for a prof connection, and this is exactly the way OP should go about this, rather than a cold email to a prof. The fact that some (many?) university AOs are making these connections shows how important the school believes making profs accessible is…it’s part of the sales process. And let’s not forget colleges do need to sell and differentiate themselves, even the highly rejective ones.

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We didn’t see a correlation between selectivity and profs being made available. D met with profs at safeties and reaches. And for sure it gave her more information for the “why us” essays.

One of our best contacts though was an admin in D’s intended major. We stopped into the office really so D could just see the building where she was going to have most of her classes and the woman was so excited to talk to D (or bored doing her job) that she gave her an hour long impromptu tour of the whole building, including more labs. She was able to share a lot of specifics about course registration, class size, the process for getting into a closed out course, % of women in the major and on faculty, etc… She was a treasure trove of information, and for some things we didn’t even consider asking (it was one of our early college visits).

It was such a helpful stop we tried to do that at other schools going forward. No other school had someone give her a tour but we did have some stops where the admins chatted for a good long time. And like prof visits, some schools fell off the list and others rose to the top.

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Yes, same… At University of Chicago it was a last minute call while on tour there. The math professor like didn’t want us to leave… Lol. Super kind person… He even gave my son a Calc problem on his office blackboard to show him how the schools approach to teaching… But of course setting up meeting ahead of time is the way to go…