<p>Hello, everyone! I was wondering if any of you would be able to tell me if it's still worth it to get in touch with professors who are studying things that interest me.</p>
<p>To give you a bit of background information, I'm applying to the University of Florida's (UF's) and the University of Central Florida's (UCF's) Counselor Education programs (I'm hoping to become a school counselor after earning my Master's degree). During the application process, someone informed me (I can't remember who at the moment) that I might want to contact faculty members who have research interests similar to my own. So I called the Assistant Admissions Coordinator for UF's program and the Graduate Admissions Counselor for UCF's program and asked them for their advice on the matter.</p>
<p>The former told me not to contact anyone until I've already been accepted to the program, so I haven't. On the other hand, the latter informed me that I should begin contacting professors as soon as possible, as they normally get a lot of emails in January from students like me.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get around to it until now. Considering that UCF's Fall Priority deadline is January 15th (I believe that they also have a regular deadline, which is February 15th), should I still bother to do so?</p>
<p>Any advice would be appreciated! Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>Contacting professors is really more for PhD studies or research-based master’s programs, in which you need to join professor’s lab and thus need one’s support before you are admitted. That doesn’t mean that contacting a professor before an MA program in counseling won’t help you - it’s always nice to have a faculty member on your side - but it’s not necessary. Most of the people who get into that program probably won’t have.</p>
<p>That said, simply contacting a professor in and of itself isn’t what helps you. Just like you said, they hear from lots of students in January - and many more from August through December - and they won’t support all or even most of them in their admissions efforts. They’ll only actually help you if they see promise in you and really want you to help them in their research or such, which is why this is usually undertaken by PhD applicants. Do you intend to do research in the program alongside a professor? Are you contacting one because you might want to work with them on a research project? If so, then you still need a legitimate question to ask - like do they take master’s students on in the lab, or are they still working the same area or have they moved onto a new one, something like that (but phrased better). And even so, they would be more likely to help an MA student who indicates they would want to continue on to a PhD program.</p>
<p>If you’re just contacting them because someone told you you should, and you’re not really interested in doing research at the school (or are okay with waiting until you get there to see opportunities), I don’t think that will help you.</p>
I see… Thank you very much for your reply! It was really informative!
I forgot to mention in my original post that I’m thinking of writing a thesis and that the professors that I’m thinking of getting in touch with are those individuals that I’d want to work with in order to get it published. Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m going to see how my research interests evolve as I go through the program and contact those faculty members later on, around my second year.