Ben Mortenson

• Familiarize yourself with the program requirements. You want to learn as much as possible from the information available to you before you reach out to a faculty member. Be sure to visit our graduate degree program listings and program-specific websites.
• Check whether the program requires you to seek commitment from a supervisor prior to submitting an application. For some programs this is an essential step while others match successful applicants with faculty members within the first year of study.

• Identify specific faculty members who are conducting research in your specific area of interest.
• Establish that your research interests align with the faculty member’s research interests.
  • Read up on the faculty members in the program and the research being conducted in the department
  • Familiarize yourself with their work, read their recent publications and past theses/dissertations that they supervised. Be certain that their research is indeed what you are hoping to study.

• Compose an error-free and grammatically correct email addressed to your specifically targeted faculty member, and remember to use their correct titles.
  • Do not send non-specific, mass emails to everyone in the department hoping for a match.
  • Address the faculty members by name. Your contact should be genuine rather than generic.
• Include a brief outline of your academic background, why you are interested in working with the faculty member, and what experience you could bring to the department.
• Highlight your achievements and why you are a top student. Faculty members receive dozens of requests from prospective students and you may have less than 30 seconds to peek someone’s interest.
• Provide documents that can help the faculty member gauge interest in you as a potential student. This could be a Statement of Intent, a Writing Sample, a list of publications or research endeavors.
• Demonstrate that you are familiar with their research
  • Convey the specific ways you are a good fit for the program
  • Convey the specific ways the program/lab/faculty member is a good fit for the research you are interested in/already conducting
• Be enthusiastic, but don’t overdo it.

G+PS regularly provides virtual sessions that focus on admission requirements and procedures and tips how to improve your application.