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Julia Powles

PHD comics' Jorge Cham on misery, hope and academia

Jorge Cham, creator of the cult comic strip Piled Higher and Deeper , or PHD, is probably the most gut-achingly funny/tragic counsellor you could recommend to a PhD student -- or to any confounded friend, lover, or parent trying to understand what he terms, with some flourish, the "global misery phenomenon" of graduate school.

Cham is a full-time cartoonist, but the deep scars wrought by a PhD programme (in robotic engineering) remain his constant muse.

His webcomic has been running since he started grad school in 1997, is syndicated worldwide, and attracts a loyal following among that peculiar breed of poorly-paid, slightly masochistic overachievers, bravely hunting the frontiers of knowledge, free food, most random societies on campus, and unrequited supervisor approval.

PHD follows the travails of four main characters in grad school: the nameless, hapless hero that bears considerable resemblance to Jorge; Cecilia, the reluctant geek constantly frustrated by undergraduates; Tajel, the free-living social sciences student always willing to rally for a cause; and Mike Slackenerny, that person -- every research group has one -- who has been there longer than anyone can remember. The students' harried encounters with the demanding, loveless Professor Smith and absent-minded Professor Jones form the foundation for many priceless recurring gags, poking fun at the lows of grad student life.

Recently, Jorge was in the UK on an academic world tour , talking about 'The power of procrastination'. His thesis has something for all of us -- grad students and otherwise.

The power of procrastination

"The first thing to note", says Cham, "is that procrastination is not the same thing as laziness. Laziness is when you don't want to do anything. Procrastination, its close but distinct cousin, is when you don't want to do the one thing you really ought to be doing, right now. It's not that you don't want to do it, it's just that you find doing everything else possible, from some completely obscure hobby to categorising the entire internet, like the Yahoo dudes did when their supervisor was on summer break, more appealing."

How much time do you spend on a given comic?

I doodle and brainstorm on a notebook I always carry with me. It can take anywhere from five minutes to eight hours to work out a comic. Drawing it on the computer (using a Cintiq) usually only takes one hour.

Simon Singh has written a whole book about mathematics and The Simpsons . Have you got some examples of deep-coded nerd gags in your comics?

I always try to generalise things because my audience spans so many disciplines, but I do have a running gag that pi/2 is always the answer, and I've lost count how many times I've hidden 1.57 into my comics over the years.

Can you give away anything about your characters?

Increasing the ratio of female professors is a big topic I hope to address in the future. The nameless grad student was given a name in The PHD Movie (the film adaptation of the comics), but it's not clear yet whether that's canon or not.

The comics will eventually follow the characters to the completion of their time in grad school. One graduated several years ago (and is now a Post-doc), and I think another will graduate in the next year or two.

Mark Andrews

Andy Greenberg

Morgan Meaker

Matt Burgess

You mentioned The PHD Movie . I've heard there's a sequel in the pipeline. Tell us about it.

Yes, we're trying to make a sequel to The PHD Movie ! A few years ago we made what I think is the first independent movie adaptation of a webcomic, and it was a great success in the academic world. It screened at over 500 universities and research centres worldwide (including Antarctica) and got great reviews.

Recently, I've gotten a lot of inquiries whether we're going to make a follow-up so I decided to give the fans a chance to make it happen by launching a Kickstarter . What's different about these movies is that they involve real scientists, researchers and staff members at a real top university (Caltech) in the acting and producing roles.

Part of the message we want to convey is that people in academia are not robots, that they have different passions, talents and even a sense of humour. So, the movie is in the hands of the internet to make it a reality.

Do you have a favourite PHD series?

I started listing out some of my favourite series, but then I realised another reason it's great to be a creator online is that it sort of doesn't matter how many people appreciate any particular piece of work you do. As long as you create something that has meaning to you, you will most likely find others who also connect with it, and the connection will probably be deeper than if you tried to create something that you think everyone would like. It's also easier to take risks because if people didn't particularly like something you did, you have your whole archive there for people to also sample and find something they like.

Is there one comic that stands out as particularly special to you?

One particular comic I've done that comes to mind is a version of Alice in Wonderland where Cecilia gets pulled through her monitor into Thesisland, as a metaphor for her feeling lost on her research. It's a series of comics I feel that works on different levels (character, arc, story, artwork, punch-lines). I also wrote and drew them during the first few weeks my son was born, so it's special also because I was somewhat inspired by that. It's not one I'm particularly famous for, but every once in a while someone will come up to me to say it's their favourite too.

You can see the 11 part series online, starting here and ending here .

The PHD Movie is available to watch for free all this month . You can fund the sequel through this Kickstarter campaign

This article was originally published by WIRED UK

Jason Parham

Angela Watercutter

Jennifer M. Wood

Eric Ravenscraft

• Jorge earned his Bachelor's of Science from Georgia Tech.
• In 2009, he was awarded the 2009 NSF/AAAS International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge First Place in Informational Graphics with his collaborator Dwayne Godwin, a professor of Neuroscience at Wake Forest University. Their comics about the brain appeared in Scientific American Mind from 2010-2017.
• In 2011, PHD Comics was adapted into a feature-length film called " The PHD Movie ", which screened at over 500 locations worldwide, including all 7 continents. A sequel titled, " The PHD Movie 2: Still in Grad School " was produced in 2015 and also screened worldwide. Nature Journal called the movie " Astute, funny " while the New York Times wrote, " Well, Postdocs think it's funny. "
• To date, he has delivered over 400 invited lectures internationally on his experiences in academia and being an independent artist and science communicator.
• The PHD Comics website has been visited by over 60 million visitors in the last 10 years.
• Six book collections of his comics have been published (available in stores and online ).
• " We Have No Idea ," his book co-written with physicist Daniel Whiteson was published May 2017 by Riverhead Books/Penguin Random House and was a Der Spiegel Best-Seller. The book won the Wenjin National Book Award in China.
• His animated explanations of the Higgs Boson and Gravitational Waves went viral and have been viewed millions times.
• He was the subject of a question in a British Quiz Show .
• He lives near Los Angeles, CA with his family.
• He was named one of Los Angeles' most interesting people of 2013.

The times are changing: Is PhD Comics still relevant?

http://phdcomics.com/comics.php

I’ve enjoyed PhD comics. I’ve even said a few words to its author, and he has drawn pictures in and signed a couple of books of his I bought. In 2008 and 09 when I started this PhD process, his comics and criticisms of the academic community seemed deadly accurate. However, as I finished the PhD, the comics seemed hard to relate to.

Lately, I’ve found PhD comics to be annoying. Some aspects of the comic strip that were relevant 10 years ago, when the PhD Comics author got his PhD (2002-2003?), are quickly losing their relevance. In the worst case PhD comics gives the academic profession a “bad rap” or just come across as professional “put-downs” based on dated partial-truths.

What I think has changed in the past ten years to make PhD comics lose its relevance:

• The fields of study people are pursing are changing.

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/sed/2013/data/tab12.pdf

As a percentage of PhDs earned, there have has a significant increase in more practical fields such as all engineering disciplines, computer science, and biomedical/health sciences. This has been accompanied by a decrease in humanities, social sciences, and education PhDs (as a percentage of total PhDs earned).

Humanities and Social Science PhDs are a tough gig, but there is little growth in the number of PhDs earned in these fields in the last decade.

• The time it takes to get a PhD decreased significantly from 2003 to 2013

By 1 year across all fields-> http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/sed/2013/data/tab31.pdf

This means there is 1 year less of the bad stuff “PhD comics” is based off of. This is, no doubt, in part due to reason 1……There are more people completing PhDs in fields where it takes less time to complete a PhD. My experience was nothing like the “Life Taking” experiences still published in the PhD Comics books. For example……

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=360

• More people are earning PhDs.

A 29% increase from 2003 to 2013 (11994 more people earned PhDs in 2013 than in 2003). If it is such a bad thing to do, why are more people doing it?

Most of the increase has been due to engineering, life science, and computer science PhDs.

• Healthy academic salaries vs. anemic industry salaries for engineers over the last decade

PhD comics doesn’t seem to address the issue that salaries and opportunities in engineering (and industry in general) are often greater in academia vs. industry. This is new in the last ten years and is a result of the stagnant salaries for engineers working in industry in the last decade.

I worked as an engineer with a master’s degree in industry for several years starting in the early 2000s. When I started, I made more than a tenure track (but not yet tenured) assistant prof with a couple years of experience in an R1 university. When I ended and went back to grad school, a tenure track (not yet tenured) assistant professor with a couple years of experience would have me beat in salary by ~15k…this is based on my industry salary after several years of experience. (Just in case people don’t know…salaries at public universities are public info)

Once you get tenure, academic engineering salaries at R1 universities far outpace industry salaries…even I’m afraid to let on how good these salaries actually are…. One might argue that few get tenure. This is not true in engineering. It is rare to see a prof not get tenure in my experience. If they aren’t going to get tenure, they can almost always jump to another comparable university. Not only that, competent asst. profs can get tenure within 5-6 years.

• A “post-doc” as PhD Comics understood it ceased to exist as of about 5-10 years ago

Here is PhD comics on the “post-doc”.

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1744

It is as if the creator of Phd Comics isn’t aware of the “The Big Bang Theory”, and instead chooses to malign a type of academic position that, in all reality, doesn’t really exist anymore. It existed 10-15 years ago…no doubt. This is a change in the last decade.

For starters, the question is what do you call an individual who has earned a PhD, works in academia doing research, but is not a professor?

http://phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1596

You rarely see the official position title “postdoctoral scholar” (a.k.a. post-doc) anymore. Instead you see “Fellow”, “Research Fellow”, “Research Scientist”, or “Research Faculty”. “Fellow” or “Research Fellow” is usually considered a training position; however, there is often a very fine line between what is a “Research Fellow” vs. what is a “Research Faculty” as they often do identical jobs….For example, it is not uncommon to see a Research Fellow promoted to Research Faculty while doing the same job. The term “post-doc” would either be used as slang for a first year Fellow or a behind-their-back insult to a Research Faculty.

On the “Big Bang Theory” Sheldon, Leonard, Amy, and Raj would likely be considered Research Faculty (Sheldon was recently promoted to asst. prof). Do the lives of Sheldon, Leonard, Amy, or Raj professional resemble anything like what PhD Comics depicts? No…of course not. This is because PhD comics depicts an academic world that existed almost 15 years ago. The “Big Bang Theory” depiction of the research structure at universities is accurate in my opinion.

Secondly, these Fellows/Research Faculty’s salaries are reasonably competitive. For engineers 1st year is 50-55k, 2nd/3rd year is 60k-70k. Research Faculty (4th/5th year) at universities range between 80k-100k. Most Engineering PhDs would find similar salaries after working five years in industry (see my point 4). In some case, Research Faculty can get tenure, or act as an alternative career path to become a prof (Most profs still are fellows before becoming professors).

Beats me where PhD comics is coming from…… http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=995 http://phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1000

My Conclusion: It’s certainly not as funny anymore. What are people’s thoughts on this?

So? How does that affect anything in the comic?

Again… so? The mean time may have decreased, but that does not mean that (a) those years don’t still suck, (b) the variance still results in a lot of students taking forever to get their doctorates, or that (c) this isn’t a symptom of other problems decreasing budgets in the humanities putting stresses on faculty and students to graduate or reject them faster!

And the specific comic you posted was meant to be funny, not characteristic.

For lots of reasons, such as concerns that a bachelors or masters won’t be adequate, or because they were accepted to grad school but not to a decent job, etc. Just because more people are doing it does not automatically mean it is a good thing. It also does not mean that they are all getting jobs for which a PhD is either a requirement or an asset.

Well, we are getting a little specific now. I am also in engineering, worked in industry and then took a detour to get my PhD (in progress). I know people going through the tenure process, and I know what salaries are still like at my company, and it is not as clear cut as you are making it. In my department, assistant profs are making about what we pay new PhD’s at my company right now, and the full professors are making almost $100k less than the top engineers (not management, engineers) at my company make. The professors have more total earning potential, because they retain at least partial intellectual property rights, but it is at best evening out.

Further, tenure is no laughing matter. I have a friend who just got tenure in engineering a couple of years ago, and for 6 years he was working himself to death (compared to the 40-45 work weeks at my company). He immediately wound up on the tenure review committee and is seeing something like 50% of the tenure-track faculty denied tenure. That’s 50% who are still working themselves to death at a new school, or abandoning academia, and he is at the #1 department for his field in the country.

We have them in my department. And yes, they are called post-docs. And while it is getting less common in engineering in favor of “research scientists*” , in other fields it is still the norm. And again, the life of the post-doc depends a lot on the field and the university - there are indeed a lot of post-docs still living like the comic suggests (I know a few!), but really I am not sure why you would consider “The Big Bang Theory” to be a realistic depiction of anything . If nothing else, Sheldon would have been medicated or pushed down an elevator shaft years ago!

FWIW, none of the characters on that show (other than those in pharma) show any sign of significant income. They share apartments, have few major expenses (2 cars between the lot?), and live fairly cheaply. Other than splurging on geek toys, I see nothing to indicate that they are making a good salary as opposed to just being frugal!

*: Research scientist/faculty is not necessarily superior to being a post-doc. The money may be better, but these positions are often permanent, with no expectation of getting a tenured position.

I actually disagree with most of your post. Full disclosure: I’m in the social sciences/health sciences, but still a field where postdocs, research faculty, research scientists, etc., are very common.

In my field, a research scientist is quite different from a postdoctoral fellow, as are the attendant salaries. Research scientists are either 1) people hired on grant funding to do a specific set of tasks in support of that grant, usually under the supervision of a PI (who is generally tenured faculty at the institution), and thus the job is often term-limited unless the scientist and the PI write a new grant together, or 2) 100% soft money jobs at centers or institutes in which the scientist writes their own grants to keep themselves funded. Postdoctoral positions are traineeships; postdocs often have tasks that look like research scientists’ tasks, but they are considered in training and under the supervision of a mentor. Postdoc salaries range from $40-50K whereas research scientists/associates salaries are usually like $60-80K. (New tenure-track faculty in my field generally start at about $80-95K at R1 institutions.)

Research scientists are actually more equivalent by level tenure-track assistant professors in my field; they are independent, they usually have at least a modicum of control over the direction of research (and full control if they are one of those 100% soft money positions), and they usually aren’t using the job as a stepping-stone to a tenure-track faculty position. Postdoctoral jobs are understood to be temporary steps on the way to a faculty position, which is why the pay is so low. Current NIH levels for first-year postdocs are like $39K.

And research faculty/fellows are something else altogether. Research faculty are exactly that - faculty who don’t have to teach; they only do research. At most universities they are non-TT but it is possible to be a TT research faculty member. And a research fellow can mean anything. There are some very senior, distinguished people who take Research Fellow positions for a year or so while they’re on sabbatical from their main job.

I’m…not really sure what your vested interest is in trying to prove that PhD Comics is outdated/outmoded. I just graduated from graduate school in August 2014, and I find the depiction to be a somewhat accurate portrayal of graduate school - although of course exaggerated for humor, just as Sheldon, Leonard, and Raj are exaggerated for humor in The Big Bang Theory . (Although, let’s be fair - we don’t know what their titles were before Sheldon got promoted to assistant professor. (Sheldon also has two doctoral degrees and finished college and his first PhD in the 5 years between age 11 and age 16, so BBT isn’t exactly a bastion of real-world accuracy.) It does sound like Sheldon, Leonard and Raj are research scientists, but then again Sheldon got his PhD at 16 and was a visiting professor in Germany before he turned 20…so I think it’s safe to say that his career might have taken a different turn than the typical real-world scientist. Even in the real world, exceptionally well-prepared superstar graduate students can go straight into faculty jobs. (Also, it’s pretty clear that Sheldon was supposed to be an extremely absurd depiction of a quirky super-genius scientist.)

I also had the same observation as @cosmicfish . I mean, Sheldon and Leonard share an apartment, and none of the characters appears especially wealthy or even upper-middle-class (other than Raj, who comes from a wealthy family).

I don’t know what field Mike Slackernerny (the grad student/postdoc with red hair in the comics) is supposed to be in, but it’s not unrealistic that a graduate student make nearly ten times what he made in grad school depending on the field. One of my former students just started a sociology PhD program in which the stipend is $18,000 a year; if he got a job at a management consulting firm in 6 years, he could very well make nearly $180K a year. Again, it’s exaggeration, but a top grad student making $35K at MIT or Caltech or something could very well go to Google or Apple and make many times that, and probably more than he could expect to make as an assistant professor.

The tl;dr point of all this is that the graduate school - postdoc - assistant professor model does actually still exist and is flourishing in many fields, and salaries for postdocs are still actually pretty low.

Having been a physics professor for over 30 years, I find the comic still quite relevant. I see a lot of the characters in my own experience. Of course one can always find counterexamples but the bottom line is that it is a comic not a scholarly treatise on the state of academia.

I’m in the biomedical sciences, where five-ish year postdocs are more or less a hard requirement for a professor position at a research-intensive school. My official job title is Research Fellow, but if you asked anyone (including me) what my position is, they would say postdoc.

Postdoc salaries in the biomedical sciences generally follow the [NIH NRSA payscale]( NOT-OD-14-046: Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Stipends, Tuition/Fees and Other Budgetary Levels Effective for Fiscal Year 2014 ), which starts at $42k for zero years of postdoctoral experience and goes up to $55k for seven years. That’s certainly not nothing, but it’s enough to make people gripe, and it’s nowhere near the $80-100k salaries you’re quoting for senior postdocs in engineering.

I’m glad every body responded! This is exactly the type of conversation I wanted to have and expected to have. I didn’t expect many people to “like” what I had to say. I’ll respond to everything. It may take some time…

I think the comic regularly crosses line of what is good taste. Like I said, sometimes I’ve enjoyed it, but other times it comes across as overly personal in its criticisms of people who choose to work at universities. For example…

http://phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1106

It’s not Dilbert. Dilbert is still relevant and funny in my opinion. Most of the US work or has a family member working like Dilbert. PhD comics paints academia in a bad light. People you meet who are not in academia may start talking about PhD comics. I don’t think that is helpful.

When I was in grad school…it was within the last year. Other grad students were genuinely annoyed by Phd comics too. I’m not alone in my opinions.

My experience working in industry was not a good one. For somebody to say that, compared to academia, the grass is always greener if you just go take a “real job” hits me harder than it would hit others. Education represents a large part of the US economy. Phd comics both mystifies this world and puts it down.

I love comic books and geek toys. I also know how much they actually cost. I always thought the running joke of the series was that these guys were sporting collections worth 20k…they aren’t frugal at all. Two grown men rooming together to save money, so they could by 20k in “toys”. I thought that was funny and most people got that.

However, my point was never that they were wealthy or even upper middle class. My point was that they were solid middle class, stable, and had a future. This couldn’t be farther from what PhD comics describes for a career path.

I don’t see a problem with the comic you referenced. I don’t happy to agree with that one (post-docs tend to be better off in all categories than grad students, in my experience), but it doesn’t seem to me to be in bad taste.

First, I genuinely cannot think of a single person who has (a) ever mentioned PhD comics and (b) never been to grad school. Second, inside jokes about how great everything is aren’t jokes, they are poorly disguised propaganda - that’s why this comic (like Dilbert) pokes fun at the bad or hard parts of some shared occupation, in this case grad school and academia.

This is literally the first time I’ve heard of anyone having a problem with it. I have a dozen friends at a dozen grad programs in a dozen different fields, and the worst I ever heard from anyone was “I didn’t care for today’s much”.

So you have a problem with the comic that pokes fun at the thing you love (PhD Comics) but have no problems with the one that pokes fun at the thing you hated (Dilbert). I am sorry you had a bad experience in industry. No one is saying “the grass is always greener”, both comics have picked a niche and are building comedy by pointing out the shared struggles. It’s how humor works. PhD Comics is not intended to be career advice.

I have a ton of friends in industry, and a fair number in academia. My friend who just got tenure is living the dream and has a great life… that took a ton of work and no small amount of luck to get. I have other friends finishing their PhD’s and finding out that even from a good school, interviews can be hard to get. I have still other friends languishing in the hell that is being an “adjunct professor”, living on food stamps as a reward for a decade of college. The fact that people in industry see a similar range of experiences does not make academia some utopian existence, nor is the opposite true.

So over years they have spent $20k on stuff. So? Split that in two, spread it over some unknown number of years, and make it their only significant luxury, and it is a pretty small annual cost to automatically demonstrate “middle class”.

And yet that show has also made jokes about money (Wolowitz making SO much less than his wife) and about status and serves primarily to point out how pathetic these people are. The bad things that PhD comics points out about academia are being spread across academic journals and newspapers around the country - academia is fantastic for those in tenured jobs, but for everyone else it is often (not always) a huge struggle for comparatively low pay, and those tenured jobs are getting fewer and fewer even as the number of PhD’s is rising. PhD Comics is a way for people in academia and grad school to share a joke over common tribulations. If you don’t find it funny, you don’t have to read it .

I should note that, as an engineer and a PhD candidate, I have more problems with BBT than I ever had with PhD Comics. The latter shows good, intelligent people dealing with a difficult situation. The former shows intelligent but bumbling, socially inept, physically unimpressive people creating their own problems day after day. At least one has severe psychological problems. There is not a single person on the show who is represented as being a complete human being without some major flaw, and many are perpetually unhappy. I usually enjoy the show, but to hold it up as an example of how great academia is just mystifies me, because if I take it as such, all I see are awful people living a mediocre life.

I know exactly zero people outside of academia who are even passingly familiar with PhD Comics. I have certainly never met anyone who has no experience with academia and has approached me thinking that a humorous comic is a reflection of my every day life. I’d think they were quite off in the head if they did.

I have the same problem with @cosmicfish about BBT. At least PhD Comics (at least, in my experience) is an extensive inside joke that’s mostly only read by people within academia who actually “get it.” BBT is supposed to be a popular interest television show, but it portrays scientists as socially inept nerds who don’t know how to interact with other people - particularly other people without PhDs. Not to mention that a minor irritation I have is Sheldon’s possession of 2 PhDs. I have heard many non-academics hold up 2 PhDs as some kind of ultimate sign of nerdishness and genius, wheres having one myself I always think that having 2 PhDs - especially in two closely related fields is 1) virtually impossible, since most programs would never let you do that, and 2) pointless and stupid, and really more a sign of how much a person doesn’t want to move on than intelligence. I am similarly baffled at how someone can think BBT is a more realistic portrayal of science and the every day life of academics than PhD Comics.

I’m a current postdoc and I certainly don’t take that comic personally. Number one, because again, PhD Comics is supposed to be an exaggeration in order to be funny. Secondly, though, because it’s partially true. That comic is also part of a series - you have to take it in context. Mike is a new postdoc, and the more experienced postdocs are making the point that postdocs are often “invisible” on campus, as they have no official status - they’re not student, but not quite faculty. (Fortunately my university has recognized postdocs as staff, so we don’t have that issue, but that IS a significant problem at many campuses!) [url=<a href=“http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1103%5DThis%5B/url”>http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1103]This[/url] one is a particularly good one in that series.

More seriously, the are things said by everybody that I just don’t agree with…or are things said that are really good points for discussion and debate. What are PhD comics?

My problem is that I don’t think PhD comics is a “Comic” anymore. It was 10 years ago. Some of its entries are comics of the same format as Dilbert. Other entries are well referenced graphs and visuals that would be perfectly appropriate in a New York Times education article. Such as…

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1086

Others entries are highly critical cartoons that are closer to the political cartoons you might find in the political editorial section of the newspaper. Such as…

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1144

I guess what I’m saying is that I see PhD comics more as “Media” or “Press” similar to how I would see the Drudgereport or the New York Times. No doubt Dr. Cham should be able to publish what he wants. However, if somebody wants to debate his ideas, scrutinize his opinions, and flat out criticize his work, you can’t pull back and say “Whoa! It is only a comic”. It is not a comic anymore, and it has opened itself up to debate and criticisms. As serious articles discuss the state of academia, they often will reference PhD comics.

For these reasons I disagree with the statement…

I think that at this point, it is “media” similar to a newspaper. Criticism and debate over what it is saying are perfectly fair game.

It is also notoriously hard to avoid as universities regularly invite Dr. Cham to speak, it is plastered over the walls of universities, and it often referred to in articles about the higher education system.

I see it more like “hey, if you like this strip you might also like to know that…” Being occasionally informative does not make you media or press, especially if the substantial majority of your time is devoted to straight up humor.

PhD Comics is not the only one to do this, by the way. The Oatmeal, for example, often includes facts or real opinions as part of the comic, but that does not mean that it is anything other than comedy.

In the discussion of the comic itself, I think you absolutely can. If that same artist then brings up those ideas in a non-comedy venue (such as someone inviting that person to speak at a university) then I think that is the part you should criticize. And if that is what you want to criticize, then please reference it. If Dr. Chan made comments about higher education in a serious context, and you disagree with them, I would be more than happy to discuss them, once I have read them. But if you feel a comic strip is too inaccurate… I am not sure what to say, other than that I disagree! Your results may vary!

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, has comics plastered around every engineering department (academic or professional) that I have ever visited, has been invited to talk at numerous “serious” venues, and has been referenced in academic and professional works. That does not make him anything other than a comic.

The fact is that postdoc positions such as those described in PhD Comics do still exist and are quite common, particularly in academia. Postdocs working for government labs or research centers (NASA, NIH, etc) generally have a more defined role as a postdoc and are more likely to be very productive. Postdocs in academia are much more variable. I have seen them be essentially “faculty lite” positions where the postdoc gets a lot of professional freedom and can get a lot of great, career-building things done, and I have seen them be glorified lab assistants. In that regard, PhD Comics is still pretty much right on with those strips.

The moral of the story, though is that your mileage may vary. Every once in a while there will be a strip that really annoys me as being completely opposite my own experience, but inevitably then there is one soon after that hits the nail on the head. Not every comic can resonate with every person.

Of course, if you really don’t like it, just stop reading it. It’s still a far, far better depiction of academic life than the abomination that is Big Bang Theory, but if you find the latter to be funnier, then by all means, stick to that.

I really, really don’t get how you conclude that PhD Comics are not comics anymore. Even the graphs and visuals are drawn to be humorous. That second pictorial isn’t remotely political; it does reference a real phenomenon, but it’s still jokey. Just because Cham doesn’t use the traditional comic format 100% of the time doesn’t mean that PhD Comics is not a comic. It definitely doesn’t mean that you can compare it to Drudge Report, let alone the New York Times. I mean, for Pete’s sake the NYT is a serious news outlet. PhD Comics doesn’t pretend to be serious or about news.

The only serious comic I can ever remember them doing - that didn’t have a touch of humor to it - was the one after Jorge Cham visited a lab doing cancer research, and drew a comic talking about how cancer research was very different from what most people thought it was.

It is a form of media, but so are television shows, movies, other comics, books, graphic novels, etc. It’s not press (aka news media). You won’t see Jorge Cham clambering to the White House with a press pass or even to a university over some new announcement. He doesn’t seriously cover news. He doesn’t even seriously cover higher education news.

Still, nobody is saying that you can’t criticize him - you can criticize anything, whether it’s a comic or a comedy on television - or a serious literary novel or newspaper. I think the argument here is not that you can’t criticize Cham and PhD Comics, but that most of us simply disagree with your criticisms of PhD Comics. And I personally said that I think that you are taking PhD Comics too seriously - you criticize the comics for making exaggerated claims when I was pointing out that Cham does that deliberately, for humor, just like Dilbert and every other comic poking fun at reality does. I have to say that it’s kind of absurd to conclude that it’s not a comic anymore simply because he uses different formats when drawing it - Bill Watterson did that with Calvin and Hobbes, too, but it was still a comic. XKCD covers geeky stuff and serious stuff from time to time, but they’re definitely still a comic. A comic is not about the content so much as the medium. Comics are allowed to cover serious stuff; they’re allowed to do social commentary. In fact, if they didn’t no one would read them and they’d be boring.

As serious articles discuss the state of academia, they often will reference PhD comics.

When has a serious article ever seriously referenced PhD Comics? And by “seriously referenced,” I mean took as gospel what the strip means and used it as a discussion point in the article (not just used the comic as a funny jumping off point for the article).

Back to some of the original points people raised… @cosmicfish brought up some reasonable points.

To me, the same things that suck about grad school also extend the time it takes to graduate. These same things represent the content of about 60% of PhD comics. These include:

• Funding problems
• Bad advice from your advisor
• Little to no advice from your advisor
• General time wasting activities you're assigned to do (e.g. anything from editing your advisor wiki page to filling out multiple forms to be reimbursed for a 5 dollar charge at a conference)
• Problems from your dissertation committee members
• Being assigned to projects destined to fail.

An interesting point was raised…

quote this isn’t a symptom of other problems decreasing budgets in the humanities putting stresses on faculty and students to graduate or reject them faster!

I actually do agree that in the past 5 to 10 years, these policies have been implemented across the board in almost all fields.

My sincere question is whether people think the decrease in time to graduate over the past decade are primarily due to these policies or an overall improvement in the system (i.e. improving on the 8 or so items I listed that make a PhD suck). I personally think the decrease in time to graduate is due to an improvement in the things make a PhD suck. I’d be happy to hear other points of view.

I think that the time to graduate has reduced for a number of reasons, including concerted efforts by some departments to move students through faster, a more focused attempt by the students to finish earlier, and funding issues that simply limit how long you can stay.

I certainly do not think that all 8 of the factors you mentioned have improved. For example, funding is a bigger problem than ever - not only are more students seeing assistantship/fellowship shortages, but also the grant money needed to complete research has also reduced. This pushes students to graduate faster (while they still have funding!), it sure does not make their time any better!

So here is my point of view: Grad school has gotten shorter, on average. That alone does not mean it has gotten better, just that it has gotten shorter. Grad students experience all the problems you mentioned and more, and while some may have improved (again, on average) others have gotten worse. The grad experience, while wonderful in some ways, is still extremely hard compared to industry, and outcomes for graduates have certainly not improved. The difficulties humorously discussed in PhD comics are still experienced by a great many grad students all around the country, and if you yourself don’t or didn’t experience them, the sheer popularity of the comic should give you some proof that it resonates with a lot of students and former students.

I’ve heard professors say this. Funding pressures were given as one of the reasons I should graduate ASAP by my doctoral advisor….he gave me lots of good reasons….I think graduating ASAP was a good decision by the way.

The issue is that, on the surface, the data does not back up this claim. In fact, the exact opposite seems to be true. As of 2013, funding has never been better.

Below is data on doctoral student’s primary source of funding from 2001 – 2013 (In percentage). Keep in mind that the number of doctoral recipients has increased by 29% from 2003 to 2013.

2013 http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/sed/2013/data/tab35.pdf Teaching assistantships: 20.8 Research assistantships or traineeships: 32 Fellowships or grants: 26.9 Own resources: 15.4 Employer: 3.0 Other: 1.8

For some strange reason I could not find data on 2012

Data for 2001-2011 is summarized on page 13 (figure 4A) http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/sed/digest/2011/nsf13301.pdf

Students funding themselves primarily from their own resources dropped from ~30% to ~15% between 2001 and 2013. This is a massive improvement, and a major change.

Now there may be some complex meanings hidden in the dept. of education/nsf data. I’d be happy to hear what they are.

Ditto. A lot of my grad school friends regularly post PhD comics, and I’ve identified with more than a few. The #whatshouldwecallgradschool Tumblr page is also quite popular.

I love #WhatShouldWeCallGradSchool . Hilarious.

I think the decrease in the percentage of PhD students funding themselves from their own resources has been partially due to a focus on programs in simply cutting spaces in their programs. They no longer let in students who don’t have funding in a lot of cases, not allowing them to fund their own way from personal resources. Or perhaps with the advent of the Internet, students are more savvy about funding and have chosen not to attend programs at which they were not funded, whereas before they would’ve.

One interesting note is that the 2011 chart on post-graduation salaries does demonstrate that across fields, on average people who go into industry make more money than people who start in academia. Postdocs in general hover right around $40K; academic salaries seem to range from $55K (humanities) to $75K (engineering), and industry salary averages range from $55K (humanities) to $100K (physical sciences). The only field that does not seem to have an industry bump is humanities - humanities PhDs make about $55K on average after earning a PhD regardless of whether they stay in academia or leave.

I will say, though, that most of my colleagues that have moved onto academic positions have been offered salaries quite a bit higher than the average for the social sciences. They do, however, tend to move onto R1 or elite institutions.

Another thing the chart shows is that the number of people going into postdoctoral positions has actually been increasing. They’ve always been more or less ubiquitous in the life and physical sciences - with about 60% of life scientists and 50% of physical scientists going to postdocs after the PhD in 1991. But in 2011, 20 years later, 70% of life scientists and just under 60% of physical scientists did postdocs after the PhD. The rate has creeped up in other fields, too. In 1991, less than 20% of social scientists and engineers did postdocs after graduate school; in 2011, 40% of social scientists and engineers did postdocs after the PhD.

@Cosmicfish …for whatever it is worth, I have been in this situation. The grant that funded me ran out. This put me under considerable pressure to graduate. There was some talk about putting me on another grant or a TA…I honestly could have used about 4 more months of funded time. I think if I made a huge fuss about it with my advisor I could have not graduated and remained a funded grad student. I couldn’t wrap my head around fighting to delay getting a PhD though. It seemed like a bad idea…like “looking a gift horse in the mouth”. I was considerably stressed and upset about it at the time.

For a few months I was able to become a “temp employee” to keep access to e-mail, the library, most of the computer labs, and software tools I needed for simulations. I still had access to my lab (I had keys and all). I still met regularly with my doctoral advisor. I actually found consulting work with a university start-up for a couple months…it paid better than a TA and was considerably easier. The start-up seemed happy with what I did, and they seemed happy I wasn’t permanent. I used some of my own funds too. I could’ve worked more for the start-up, but I was getting so much work done on my papers that I kinda said “screw it” and used my own funds. Eventually, another professor noticed that I kept coming to the University and gave me a post-doc/research fellow/fellow…started paying me to come. A research fellow is a full staff position where I’m at. I kept working on my old research in my new post-doc/research fellow/fellow position…with my new advisor’s approval…I told him I would spend some time on my old research.

It is good to that universities graduate PhD earlier, but they need to make sure that they continue to give students opportunities to continue their research. Journal papers can take months to write and a year to get published once submitted. My university was good to me in this sense. When I was under so much pressure to graduate when I knew I wasn’t really done…Yes, that was stressful and upsetting though.

Let’s move on to tenure. Granted Dr. Cham’s “Game of Tenure” is funny (and irritating). In a strange way, it is funny because it is brazenly wrong…II think…but I’m open to learning something new here though.

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1574

My first reaction is that I don’t want to be a professor at this university. Where is this? Why? Do they just not get grants? This is very different from anything I saw in my PhD program.

Where I did my PhD (Michigan), the number of faculty getting tenure was closer to 90%. It was hard to know when faculty didn’t get tenure. They’d just leave to a university that was just as good…and this wasn’t all that common for people to leave. I used to bring in faculty guests for a student organization to give takes from other universities too. I would take them out to dinner and talk to them. Often tenure came up. Again, in applied engineering fields, I regularly heard the 80%-90% percentage of tenure-track faculty getting tenure at other universities. These professors would specifically say that there was a common misconception that getting tenure was hard. So, what is going on here?

I will say the following. I’ve heard MIT’s engineering has a bad reputation for not giving tenure-track faculty tenure. In my undergrad, a good liberal arts school, tenure was no joke. The number of tenure track faculty getting tenure was more like 70%-80%. At one point it was a major issue on campus (there were many articles written on it in our school newspaper), but there was not an engineering program on campus though.

Here is an actual study done by researchers back in 2006:

http://www.opia.psu.edu/sites/default/files/AIR_Tenure_Flow_Paper_06.pdf

And here are some highlights:

While this matches with your experience, the paper points out that this is evaluating only the tenure decision itself, and ignores faculty who leave prior to being submitted for tenure. In other words, this number is like giving the graduation rate at a university by dividing the number of graduates by the number of students with enough credits to graduate, ignoring transfers and dropouts.

This process compares the number of individuals entering tenure-track positions and then actually getting tenure at that university, a more honest comparison.

Of interest to me is that it appears that (at least at Penn State, the focus of this particular study), tenure recommendation rates are pretty consistently at or above 90%. The paper doesn’t really go into the disparity in the numbers - why so many people, who only got to their positions through a lifetime of hard work leave despite apparent confidence from their departments and universities. I can’t imagine that it is because academia is so much more pleasant than their options in private industry.

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The Joke Is on the Ph.D.

By Jaywon Choe

• July 22, 2011

Jorge Cham's comics started out as just another way for a grad student — himself — to procrastinate. Now he’s helping millions of others do the same.

“Piled High and Deeper — Life (or the Lack Thereof),” more commonly known as “ Ph.D. Comics ,” is dedicated to the plight of doctoral candidates: their sleep-deprived stupor, fleeting social lives and the tragic realization that advisers don’t really care.

Dr. Cham, who had no professional art training, created his strip in 1997 as “therapy” while working toward a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at Stanford.

“I’d always doodled but I never really did a comic strip,” he says. “It took the pain of grad school to get it out.” He has since given up the life of the mind to professionally poke fun at the postgraduate world, via comic books, speaking engagements and mugs and T-shirts. His Web site, phdcomics.com, attracts seven million visitors a year.

This summer, Dr. Cham is working with a theater group from the California Institute of Technology, where he did postdoctoral work, to turn “Ph.D. Comics” into a film. He is writing the script, and the movie will feature grad students both in front of and behind the camera. “The producer is a graduate student in geological sciences, the director is a graduate student in aeronautics, all the actors are real Ph.D. students in astrophysics or physics,” Dr. Cham says. He expects to release the film online and on campuses in the fall.

For Dr. Cham, it’s not all about the comedy. He has humanitarian goals, too: to help struggling students. And it seems to be working. It’s not uncommon to find comments on his site like this one from a chemical engineering student at the University of Houston: “Your comic strip makes me feel that I am not alone, and there are others suffering through the penniless ignominy that is grad school.” 

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Edit locked.

The comics depict the typical life of graduate students in Stanford University: how they obsess about ever getting their theses completed, struggle to make ends meet with their meager stipends, wonder why life is passing them by, and slack off while their supervisors aren't looking.

Contains examples of:

• Absent-Minded Professor : Almost all of the Research Advisors introduced. They can barely remember the students' name, and hardly ever bother to read their thesis draft.
• Adaptation Name Change : Cecelia's advisor Professor Jones is named Professor Chu in the movies.
• All Issues Are Political Issues : Tajel often carries protest signboards for various causes.
• Ambiguously Brown : Dee's friend has a dark skin, but he has no name or distinctive features to determine his actual race (unlike Tajel, who we know is half-Indian from her mother).
• Batman Gambit : During Cecelia's thesis defense in the second film, her advisor Professor Chu gets an adversarial committee member to endorse her thesis by agreeing with him that an additional year of work is needed, knowing that he will change his mind to be Commander Contrarian .
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs : The "How You Spend Your Time" pie chart has a Sports & Leisure section which consist of surfing the internet, doing sports, and reading about sports while surfing the Internet.
• Call-Back : Mike teaches the protagonist how to distract with graphs, which unfortunately doesn't work too well for him. Mike himself does it over a year later, with more success.
• When we see Tajel interact with Prof. Rivera for the first time, he was lamenting her lack of apparent seriousness in her studies, especially when she chose to write about "The Grad student of Academia" for her research topic. Nowadays, their dynamics are reversed, as Rivera becomes the most egregious example of Absent-Minded Professor who never reads Tajel's draft and gives her useless advice, while Tajel desperately tries to get his support in writing her thesis.
• Professor Smith changed too. Originally he was The Faceless , then started to become more of an Absent-Minded Professor who tries to blend in with the students despite being clueless of their trends. Later, he just became a professor with a serious Lack of Empathy .
• Chekhov's Gunman : Early in the second movie, Allison points out Dr. Dukosky as the founder of their field, but the latter is surrounded by other conference attendees at the time and cannot be seen. Later during conference presentations, the Nameless Hero has a casual conversation with an old lady who turns out to be Dr. Dukosky, and she provides him with helpful advice in a subsequent scene.
• Child Prodigy : Professor Jones's daughter is only a first year in elementary school, but is intelligent enough to fix Mike's research data.
• Comic-Book Time : Every year, the strip features the characters celebrating birthdays, summer vacations and various holidays, but despite their constant complains that they're never graduating, they never seem to actually age. Cecelia lampshades this in one of her birthday strips, in which she decided that the time she spends in grad school doesn't count to her age, because it's basically living in a vacuum.
• Cool Old Lady : The second movie has Dr. Dukosky, the highly respected founder of the Nameless Hero's field of study, who takes the time to strike up a friendly conversation with him and offers him advice.
• Scott all but disappeared from the storyline after he broke up with Cecilia.
• Played for Laughs with Gerard, the token Humanities student, who was told by the PHD Comics management that he should either change his major or leave the comics altogether. He was then forced to attend a hearing to justify his existence, and had not appeared ever since.
• Creative Closing Credits : The first film overlays the credits on top of academic paperwork, accompanied by sketches of the cast and crew in the art style of the comics.
• Cuteness Overload : Most of the campus faculty practically melts at the sight of Mike's baby daughter, Sophy. He exploits this to distract them while he steals food from associations he doesn't belong to.
• Demoted to Extra : In the first film, Mike and Tajel were important supporting characters who gave guidance to the Nameless Hero and Cecelia respectively. In the second film, their roles are diminished, only getting some token lines and scenes that for most part don't directly affect the main plot.
• Divergent Character Evolution : In the earlier strips , all the University professors were portrayed as a collective group of sinister, faceless Hive Mind who goes out their way to make the students' lives more difficult, especially during Quals. Now, they're mostly given distinct appearance and personalities: Professor Smith is still the mean Stern Teacher , Professor Jones tries to be helpful but is often scatterbrained, Professor Rivera is very flippant and easygoing, but doesn't really pay attention to what his students are doing.
• Education Through Pyrotechnics : The machines used for experimental research frequently blow up in people's faces.
• The Faceless : Most of the research advisors don't get drawn in the comic panels, at least in the earlier strips. No longer the case since the 2003 strips.
• Failure Is the Only Option : To keep going, the series needs the characters to remain grad students, meaning they have to postpone the completion of their respective theses indefinitely. Mike ultimately subverts this; having been the oldest grad student for several years, he finally manages to finish his dissertation after years of procrastination and graduate, but stays anyway as a member of the teaching staff.
• Fourth-Wall Observer : Tajel takes this role in the movies. She addresses the audience at the end of both films, and refers to herself as a "secondary character" in the first movie.
• Gag Series : The main point of the strips are to make jokes about the life (or lack thereof) of a grad student, and make fun of the research advisors and Academia in general. When the strips go for more detailed plot and character development, some readers actually complain.
• Ignored Aesop : A Smithmas Carol ends with Smith reflecting on his life's journey and concluding with this: Prof. Smith: Eh, who cares? I've got tenure.
• Limited Wardrobe : Probably justified considering how cash-strapped the characters are. In any case, they are almost always depicted in the same outfits.
• Living Prop : Discussed in-universe regarding the status of grad students. Apparently, the faculty would be more likely to notice an actual missing furniture than they would a missing student.
• Meta Guy : Gerard, the Humanities student Recurring Character , only exists to represent another Grad School department apart from engineering. He's definitely aware of this, and most of his appearances have him address the readers in some way.
• Misery Poker : A humorous variation took place during the PhD widows meeting between Scott and Jenny as they ranted on their respective partners, Cecelia and Mike. Scott: Cecelia seems to have lost her way... She has a lot of work ethic but lacks purpose. Jennifer: My husband, on the other hand, has a baby on the way, but his work is pathetic and slacks on purpose.
• Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher : Cecelia's teaching style has shades of this in the first movie; she prepares baked goods for her students and comes up with an interpretive dance (complete with props and rhymes) to introduce the course material to them. She is eventually discouraged from doing this by the undergrads' seeming apathy, but returns to it enthusiastically once she gets out of her funk.
• Named by the Adaptation : In the movies, the Nameless Grad Student's name is given as Winston.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat : Faced by Mike when submitting his thesis (he has to come back because the layout isn't in perfect conformity with university rules), by Tajel when applying for a visa, and by the main character when trying to get reimbursed for travel.
• Promoted to Love Interest : The second film pairs up Cecelia and Winston (the Nameless Grad Student), though this is only revealed to the audience at the end .
• Recurring Character : Scott. He's Cecelia's boyfriend, but since he's not a Stanford student, he is actually featured less frequently than the nameless Living Props that are the Engineering Grad students. Lampshaded by Tajel when he suddenly shows up after a long absence. "Scott? I feel I haven't seen him in years
• Relationship Reveal : Throughout the second film, Cecelia and Winston (the Nameless Grad Student) are both shown receiving texts from an unrevealed party. It is revealed at the end that they had been texting each other and are romantically involved, following a Ship Tease at the end of the first film .
• Rhymes on a Dime : A lot of the comics' punchlines come from characters bantering with each other in rhymes. One example is the Misery Poker mentioned earlier, and another is the following exchange between Cecelia and her advisor. Cecelia: I have to reference... without deference? Prof. Jones: That's the preference.
• Rhyming Title : Several strips have titles such as "Webcam Labcam" and "What is... a Thesis?"
• Right in Front of Me : Upon meeting Khumalo, Tajel starts chatting him up without realizing that he's her new professor.
• Running Gag : π/2
• Sequel Hook : Near the end of the first film, Mike learns that his wife is pregnant. A sketch of their baby daughter is shown in the end credits, with "Sequel!" written next to her. She does end up appearing in the second film, though only for a brief moment in the opening montage.
• Skewed Priorities : Mike can remember "important stuffs" like who is the colorist for a particular X-Men issue, but forgets to take Quals, which he needed to graduate.
• The Slacker : While several characters are slackers to some extent, Mike Slackenerny stands head and shoulders above the rest in this regard. An eternal student, he's the PhD answer to Doonesbury 's Zonker Harris.
• She also accidentally spurts her drink on Scott when the latter mentioned that he had a job offer in London.
• Starving Student : All of the students, who live off instant ramen, and spend a lot of their time scavenging for free food.
• Mike finally graduated from his Ph.D, but he continues to stick around the campus as a Post-Doc whose activities mostly involve sleeping, napping and scavenging for free food.
• Prof. Rivera left Stanford for a position in another University, but continues to serve as Tajel's adviser. Since he barely communicate with his student or give her useful advice anyway, his departure has no virtually effect to her thesis.
• Still Got It : Prof. Smith when he finds out he can still take a nap balanced on a chair, as he used to do as a grad student.

• Though the supposed take that at Mythbusters makes it abundantly clear that he's never actually watched it and doesn't think about what the actual purpose of the show is (not to prove that something always happens, but to prove if it could happen somehow).
• Two Scenes, One Dialogue : In both films, there's a scene in which Cecelia and the Nameless Grad Student receive the same advice simultaneously from different parties at a pivotal moment. In the first film, the advice is respectively given by Tajel and Mike. In the second, it's given by the emeritus professor on Cecelia's thesis committee and Dr. Dukosky.
• Vague Age : No one really knows how old any of the characters are, since most of them are grad students who have spent countless of years in their program and not showing any signs of graduating soon, despite their constant lament that they're getting older and older as the years goes by. And given that Mike's baby daughter visibly ages over time, the setting probably doesn't run on Comic-Book Time .
• PhD - Episode 1 is based on The Phantom Menace .
• What is... The Thesis? is from The Matrix .
• Raiders of the lost dissertation is Raiders of the Lost Ark .
• Yank the Dog's Chain : During the credits of the second movie, a montage is shown of Mike's attempts to land an industry job during the conference. He is eventually offered a position... only for the employer to retract the offer when Mike starts gratuitously celebrating on the spot.

Alternative Title(s): Piled Higher And Deeper , Piled High And Deeper

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  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services | National Institutes of Health

• Created by Jonas, Nichole (NIH/NICHD) [F] , last modified on Mar 29, 2023

View a 508-compliant PDF of this issue here:  NICHD_Connection_2013_09.pdf

Happy Postdoc Appreciation Week!

"Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge Cham www.phdcomics.com

PhD Comics Transcript

There are two four-panel comic strips, both featuring two guys who are chatting outside while holding red cups.

Guy #1:   Actually, being a postdoc isn't so bad.

Guy #1:   You don't have to write grants. You don't have to worry about graduating. You don't even have to teach!

Guy #1:   You finally get to spend all your time doing the thing all your training has prepared you to do.

Guy #2: Research?

Guy #1:   Applying for faculty jobs.

Guy #2:   So my job as a postdoc…is to look for another job?

Guy #1: Yes.

Guy #1: I mean, you get paid to do research, but you do that in your spare time.

Guy #1:   Your main function is to figure out what you're going to do when your postdoc expires.

Guy #2: The research is secondary?

Guy #1:   It's an odd job.

September 2013

Download a PDF of this edition here:

• Letter from the Editor: September 2013
• Interesting Opportunity: NIH Science Policy Discussion Group…and Beyond
• Recap of “21st Century Networking: LinkedIn & Beyond”
• Meet Our New NICHD Postbac Reps
• Life Outside Lab: Dr. Sudhir Rai Visits the Rocky Mountains
• The Arts: A New Bioviz Column
• September Announcements
• September Events
• Save the Date!

20 Comics Follow the Lives of Graduate Students and the Challenges of Academia

The lives of graduate students are a unique blend of academic rigor, personal growth, and numerous challenges. These individuals are pursuing advanced degrees, such as Master’s or Ph.D. programs, and are deeply involved in research, teaching, and scholarly activities. While the pursuit of knowledge and expertise is rewarding, the path to academia is rife with its own set of challenges.

Graduate students are committed to their academic pursuits. They spend countless hours conducting research, reading scholarly articles, and preparing for exams or comprehensive assessments. The intellectual demands are high, and they must continually push the boundaries of knowledge in their field. “ PHD Comics ” perfectly captures the lives of graduate students and the challenges of academia. The comics provide a humorous and relatable window into the world of higher education, resonating with graduate students, researchers, and academics who understand the unique struggles and idiosyncrasies of academic life.

Credit: PHD Comics

For more info: Instagram | Facebook | Website

#1. How’s it going?

#2. Lab Safety

#3. Manuscript

#4. Academic edition

#5. Academic conclusions

PHD Comics, also known as Piled Higher and Deeper , is a web comic strip written and drawn by Jorge Cham . It follows the lives of several graduate students as they navigate the challenges of academia. The comic is known for its humor, insight, and relatability. PHD Comics was launched in 1997 and has quickly become a favorite among graduate students and academics alike. The comic has won numerous awards, including the Web Cartoonists’ Choice Award for Outstanding Comic Strip. He has a strong online presence through their website and Instagram account, where he has an audience of 234,000 followers.

#6. Vacations

#7. Posting on Instagram

#8. Lifestyle Influencer

#9. Different Nightmares

#10. Personal Projects

#11. Drawing

The comics humorously depict the everyday struggles, challenges, and quirks of life in academia. They often touch on topics such as research, teaching, publishing, conferences, and the academic job market. The series features a set of recurring characters, each representing different facets of the academic world, including the graduate student, the advisor, and the postdoctoral researcher. These characters are relatable to anyone who has been through or is currently in academia. Jorge Cham’s art style is simple and distinctive, making the comics easy to recognize. The characters often have exaggerated features and facial expressions, adding to the humor.

#12. Social media

#13. What about research?

#14. That’s a valid career goal

#15. What’s this?

#16. Google is bestfriend

Cham experienced firsthand the trials and tribulations of graduate school, including the long hours, intense research demands, and the emotional rollercoaster that often accompanies doctoral studies. He found that humor was an effective way to deal with the stress and challenges. Creating the webcomic served as a form of catharsis for Cham. By turning his experiences into humorous and relatable comic strips, he was able to share his frustrations and triumphs with others who were going through similar experiences. This allowed him to find humor in the often absurd world of academia.

#17. Different Views

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Best of PHD Comics

Did you get my email?

Sep 10, 2013

Grad student paranoia.

Comments ( 3 )

Top comment

So true xD And then they rage against you when you don't react on their emails within the first 2 hours...

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The Professor Is In

Guidance for all things PhD: Graduate School, Job Market and Careers

How to Write an Email to a Potential Ph.D. Advisor/Professor

By Karen Kelsky | July 25, 2011

Please note that I no longer respond to comments/questions to this post! 

Grad school application guidance package and other help listed below the post..

One of the most common points of confusion among undergraduates and new graduate students is how to write an email to contact a professor to serve as a potential Ph.D. or graduate school advisor.  This can be a minefield.  Yet the email inquiry to a potential advisor is one of the most important steps in your entire graduate school process, in that it is your chance to make a first impression on the person who will dictate many elements of your life for the next five to ten years.

I have been on the receiving end of many emails from hapless students who clearly had no guidance, and whose communication with me ended up appearing flippant and rude.

Here is that sort of email:

“Dear Professor Kelsky, I am a student at XXX College and I’m thinking about graduate school on xxx and I’m getting in touch to ask if you can give me any advice or direction about that. Sincerely, student X”

This is an instant-delete email.

Here is what an email to a professor should look like:

“Dear Professor XXX,

I am a student at XXX College with a major in xxx.  I am a [junior] and will be graduating next May.  I have a [4.0 GPA] and experience in our college’s [summer program in xxx/internship program in xxx/Honors College/etc.].

I am planning to attend graduate school in xxx, with a focus on xxx.  In one of my classes, “xxx,” which was taught by Professor XXX, I had the chance to read your article, “xxxx.”  I really enjoyed it, and it gave me many ideas for my future research.  I have been exploring graduate programs where I can work on this topic.  My specific project will likely focus on xxxx, and I am particularly interested in exploring the question of xxxxx.

I hope you don’t mind my getting in touch, but I’d like to inquire whether you are currently accepting graduate students.  If you are, would you willing to talk to me a bit more, by email or on the phone, or in person if I can arrange a campus visit, about my graduate school plans?  I have explored your department’s graduate school website in detail, and it seems like an excellent fit for me because of its emphasis on xx and xx,  but I still have a few specific questions about xx and xxx that I’d like to talk to you about.

I know you’re very busy so I appreciate any time you can give me.  Thanks very much,

Why is this email good?  Because it shows that you are serious and well qualified.  It shows that you have done thorough research and utilized all the freely available information on the website.  It shows that you have specific plans which have yielded specific questions.  It shows that you are familiar with the professor’s work.  It shows that you respect the professor’s time.

All of these attributes will make your email and your name stand out, and exponentially increase your chances of getting a timely, thorough, and friendly response, and potentially building the kind of relationship that leads to a strong mentoring relationship.

If the professor doesn’t respond in a week or so, send a follow up email gently reminding them of your initial email, and asking again for their response.  If they ignore you again, best to probably give up.  But professors are busy and distracted, and it may take a little extra effort to get through.

HOW TO CONTACT A PROSPECTIVE PHD ADVISOR

Guidance package.

Encapsulates all of the advice that we provide in our graduate school advising services, including:

1. General instructions and overview of the function and “best practices” of an initial query email to someone you hope to work with

2. A template for what an email like that should look like

3. A sample email to a business school prospective advisor

4. A sample email to a comparative literature prospective advisor

5. A sample email to a computer science prospective advisor.

AND FOR HANDS-ON INDIVIDUAL HELP WITH ALL ASPECTS OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL APPLICATION, WE OFFER THESE SERVICES:

• EMAIL CONSULTATIONS
• SKYPE CONSULTATIONS
• EDITING YOUR STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
• INTERVIEW PREPARATION

SEE MORE HERE  AND EMAIL AT [email protected] TO LEARN MORE AND GET ON THE SCHEDULE, OR CLICK BELOW:

Similar Posts:

• How Do You Write an Email or Letter to a Professor?
• How Not To Invite The Professor To Your Campus
• Working the Conference: A Letter from a Client
• Don’t Go To Graduate School (An Inadvertent Guest Post)
• Advisors, #dobetter

Reader Interactions

July 25, 2011 at 2:18 pm

Thanks for posting these bits of advice. There are so many little things about grad school that we don’t know but we are expected to know! Even though I always try to be respectful and professional in my emails to professors, having a template like this is helpful.

July 25, 2011 at 4:06 pm

You’re very welcome, Liana! I agree, it’s these little unacknowledged and untaught things that can make or break a graduate school career…. I am genuinely mystified as to why graduate colleges don’t keep a full time advisor on the staff to help undergrad and grad students with these small but critical processes. But since they don’t, I’m going to try and be that here at The Professor Is In!

January 21, 2014 at 2:28 am

I wanted to ask about: what if i sent a professor an email, which has no subject line? how will he see me, and how can i fix this problem?

2nd: i didn’t write my email as much detailed as shown above, and i sent my CV as a detailed introduction about me. so how will he see me and how can i fix this?

Please Help!

October 26, 2020 at 7:30 am

Hello there! I know this reply is late, but I just want to put it out here so that other students who had the same problem as you can know what to do. I have a question, how long ago did you send the email? If it is just a short while ago, like five minutes, you can send the professor another email saying that you clicked the send button by mistake, and this time round make sure you include a subject. If it is more than five or ten minutes, then it is best to wait for his reply. By waiting I mean one week. If he does not reply in one week, send him another email. This time you can be more detailed. And also do not forget to include the subject.

November 5, 2014 at 10:17 pm

I have sent phD project proposal to the potential advisor 12 days back, but I have not received any reply from her till today. What Shall I ask her, whether she has gone through the proposal or not or else she is not interested in that topic. Kindly advice

October 26, 2020 at 7:32 am

12 days are quite long, I will say send her a reminder email. Just one line will do, asking if she had the chance to read your previous email. If she does not reply in one week, then just move on.

August 2, 2011 at 11:26 am

This is really helpful. Actually, I had sent my first email to the potential supervisor which I had written myself without consulting to anyone or any websites and I am happy that I covered all the things that Karen has explained here. After I sent my first email he responded very well and we exchanged three emails as well. Finally he asked me to send my Masters dissertation, CV, and the proposal as well which I did after 20 days and I also got an email from him saying he received it and will get in touch with me soon. But now it has been nearly a month since I haven’t heard anything from him so I thought to write a follow up email to him and once I started writing I myself was not satisfied with the email that I wrote because I thought it was bit arrogant to directly ask what is happening with my application. So I would really be grateful if anyone could help me with that and I also don’t know how long should I wait before sending him follow up email. Any help highly appreciated. Thanks

December 5, 2017 at 4:06 pm

hi Niraj, What is happened after? I did and sent couple of professor and i did not get back yet. please advise me furhter. Thanks mohammed

November 30, 2021 at 7:10 am

Can you share with me your format of email?

August 5, 2011 at 9:00 am

What about writing an e-mail to request the addition of someone new to your committee? I have had one professor leave the University and another…well…let’s just say he is no longer a welcome member of my committee and I need to fill two spaces.

August 5, 2011 at 1:55 pm

I will do that, jenn. Look for it next week, on Monday.

September 20, 2013 at 8:44 am

Thank you! I could also use this advice, as I need to approach professors for my exams and it just feels … awkward.

October 22, 2011 at 8:37 pm

Dear Mrs. Karen, I am a Chinese stduent at Beihang University, and I want to get the first contact with my potential PhD. supervisor via E-mail, thank you very much for this constructive suggestion. Thank you very much! Best Wishes! Xu Chen

November 14, 2011 at 10:44 am

Good job demonstrating to students how to suck up to their “superiors” (and I use the word very, very lightly) by providing an example of how to properly be a subservient schmuck and schmooze a highly over-inflated, narcissistic ego. But then again, as many will end up wage slaves to people like you, it is a good skill to have. Then again, to others it reads like a massive endorsement for self-reliance.

What I find simply amazing is the endless self-congratulation that many professors give themselves for jumping through hoops in what amounts to an essentially, a pointless bureaucratic game. Hopefully your research contributes to the whole of humanity. Otherwise it is simply a waste of time in the larger scheme of things. There are people starving and dying out there, and we are worried how to properly impress the likes of you? You need to seriously examine the implications of this. In other words — get over yourself.

June 14, 2012 at 8:23 pm

You are not being fair at all. I thought you would suggest something more helpful after all the ranting. If you can’t help others don’t criticize those who are

March 14, 2013 at 10:12 am

I found this comment to be stimulating and engaging! Well done! Next time, you could also try to look at things from the other side of the argument. Many of us feel that in order to achieve success it’s important to perform in a way that academics recognise and sadly hoop jumping is a necessary facet of life whether you are a street performer looking for a permit from your local authority or an artist applying for grants from a Charitable Trust. The point of this post and the point it makes quite clearly is that many students such as myself are not trained or advised on the correct protocol concerning contacting people who are probably already quite busy and who have to read literally hundreds of emails a day. If you think you could do a better job or don’t like academia no one is forcing you to do it and there is certainly even less of an obligation to do a PhD. You site doing good for humanity as the goal we should live by. I think you also need to assess the assumptions that this makes and the moral and ethical values you espouse but don’t seem to understand.

May 12, 2013 at 10:06 am

July 15, 2013 at 6:02 pm

McDonald’s employee detected

October 13, 2013 at 2:46 am

Anunomus just about sums it up. All of this advice perpetuates academic arrogance because many of the students reading this will eventually become professors themselves and will in turn want to be treated the same way by future students.

October 11, 2015 at 8:09 am

With respect?

December 31, 2020 at 12:50 am

What’s wrong with telling a professor you like their research? Isn’t that the whole point you want to study under them? Because you respect their intellect, the unique way they approach a subject and because your interests align?

September 11, 2018 at 3:08 pm

I was hoping to find a comment like this. The author of this article “instantly deletes” an email asking for help on a matter? And for what reason, other than a disdainful hubris? Disgraceful, in my opinion.

December 29, 2011 at 10:56 pm

Dear Mrs. Karen i am really thank full to you providing such a nice post. this is very very helpful to student like me. i really appreciate your work. best wishes! and happy new year vishal mehra

January 31, 2012 at 5:00 pm

Dear Mrs. Karen

Thank you very much for your clear and concise post regarding this small but nevertheless quite important and hard to find advice.

I’m from Portugal. I’m starting my PhD in Clinical Research and i will focus my attention in resistant schizophrenia. Would it make sense to have a supervisor from a foreign country and which i don’t know personally? Don’t you think that he would accept?

Thank you very much for your help, Nuno

January 31, 2012 at 9:28 pm

Your advisor has to be in the Ph.D. program you enroll in. If you are interested in enrolling in a foreign program (and are still exploring options), then yes, you can get in touch with a potential advisor there, and if accepted, you can then attend that program. They won’t discriminate based on the fact that you are from another country, if your application is strong.

October 14, 2014 at 11:52 am

I know I’m replying to an old thread, but it occurred to me that nuno might mean getting an external advisor from a different institution than the one nuno is doing his/her PhD in. Is this done in the States at all? In a lot of European universities it seems to be possible to have an advisor from another programme or even another university.

February 20, 2015 at 12:24 am

Hey Christina,

In the US usually you are at the institution where you adviser is. However you usually have outside committee members that supervise your thesis and the can be from outside universities.

February 13, 2012 at 2:14 pm

I have a question about how to title the subject line of the email. What is a respectful and concise subject heading for an email to a potential advisor?

February 13, 2012 at 4:52 pm

Inquiry from a Prospective Graduate Student

October 10, 2013 at 2:15 pm

Thank you, this was the exact question I was trying to find an answer to. I wrote a professor earlier in the week just to introduce myself, and now I have an appointment set up with the department grad advisor and I want to meet with the professor while I am up there. I wrote a second email and asked if they had time to meet with me while I was in town. Is this rude?

February 16, 2012 at 11:19 pm

Karen, Great job ignoring anunomus, in fact I’d hugely disappointed if you do him the honor of trading words with him. This is a very helpful template. Thanks.

April 5, 2012 at 1:47 am

Dear Mrs. Karen It’s give me pleasure to visit your webpage, relay your post is very helpful, useful, and rich. I’m from Palestine, I awarded DAAD scholarship in 2008 to get M. Sc. in computer information systems, now I am looking to begin my PhD. in Germany, I must find a supervisor then we arrange to write the PhD. proposal. Finally, I found my supervisor , he send me acceptance letter after finishing PhD. proposal but my application was rejected for scholarship for some special reasons, now I am working to find another supervisor , what is your advice to me , it will better to inform the new supervisor about my previous one .. Or not? and could you provide me with a template for comprehensive motivation letters and statement of propose .

Thank you very much for your help, Rasha

April 5, 2012 at 12:16 pm

Thank you so much! I have been sitting here stumped as to how best to contact potential supervisors, as you only get one chance at a first impression. This was so helpful, and I just wanted to let you know my appreciation for sharing your advice.

Thank you, Amna

April 5, 2012 at 12:37 pm

you’re very welcome, Amna!

May 1, 2012 at 6:38 am

Professor Karen, thanks for this post. It is actually very helpful.

May 4, 2012 at 4:11 am

This is an excellent forum you have created. Thank you very much. Please i Just want to ask whether it is wise to call a Professor who has an open PhD position in his Lab and you are strongly interest, but you sent him and email and recieved no response. And is it generally a good idea to call a Professor on phone when you find interest in his research and hope that he takes you in into his Lab.

May 20, 2012 at 9:13 pm

This is what look for last long month ago. I have to say thank you very much for thing you have done, in my country we not familiar with this. Your advise help me to appropriate starting and encourage to step forward on my ph.d pathway. Thank you kullat,

May 28, 2012 at 1:21 pm

Dear Karen,

Thank you for the very insightful postings and advice.

Do you have any suggestions for a mature applicant for PhD program, who is older than most of targeted potential supervisors? I am currently working as an assistant professor as PQ faulty in a foreign institution and trying to pursue a doctoral degree starting from forthcoming fall semester.

Many thanks,

May 28, 2012 at 5:32 pm

My advice is don’t do it. I don’t say that to all potential PhD applicants, but I do say it to older ones. It’s generally a disastrous choice both financially and psychically.

July 2, 2013 at 9:47 am

I just wanted to say that I was quite pleased by this advice until I read this response. I entered higher education as a “non-traditional” student and it has turned my life around. I’m now a masters student looking at PhD programs. It pains me to see an someone in your position advising someone against further education because of their age.

July 9, 2013 at 4:17 pm

Unfortunately with the abysmal job market and the likelihood of massive debt, age becomes a major risk factor in any phd decision. I have seen the tragic outcomes among my clientele. Some do still prevail, but many more do not.

July 1, 2014 at 10:02 am

What do you consider as a “mature” applicant? Past age 25, or past age 30?

September 20, 2016 at 3:35 am

I suppose it depends what field you are in and if you are paid to be at the institution or not. In my field PhD students are typically given full funding packages and stipends, eliminating the need to take out loans. Of course, these stipends aren’t exactly generous and the job market is still dismal, but at least you don’t necessarily have to go into debt to receive a PhD. That being said, are you suggesting that there is another factor, perhaps some sort of “ageism” that also works against older students?

June 13, 2012 at 11:04 pm

Dear Karen, thanks for you rsuggestion! Do you think that including the CV as attachment might be a good move?

June 14, 2012 at 9:40 am

yes, you could. I have the slightest hesitation though. At your stage your cv won’t be very impressive, and may well be completely improperly formatted, so it could do a lot more harm than good. I suppose my instinct would be to not send it, until asked.

June 14, 2012 at 3:45 am

Dear Professor Karen Kelsky, I do appreciate creating such a great website for us as students. Actually your advice, comments and tips are very very helpful to me and I’m sure to others too. I check this website everyday indeed! Thanks Sepideh

June 14, 2012 at 8:27 pm

Thank you professor. this came at a good time.

June 14, 2012 at 8:28 pm

please continue to ignore the likes of anunomus .

June 15, 2012 at 10:41 am

June 20, 2012 at 4:12 pm

Thanks for this outline! I am currently looking into potential advisors for Fall of 2013 and would like to contact them. When would be the ideal time to do so?

July 2, 2012 at 8:58 pm

Hi Thank you for your great advices. It was all about phd application, but what about masters? What graduate school are looking for in master applicants to accept them? Thanks

July 15, 2012 at 12:04 pm

i am 3rd year medical student and want to go abroad for research elective.i have no past research experience but now i am interested in doing research in immunology.how should i write letter to any doctor.kindly paste a format here so that i can send it to docs. thanks

July 17, 2012 at 8:08 am

Thank you for your advice. Your example is the best I read so far! 🙂

April 25, 2013 at 9:14 am

http://pixie658.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/contacting-potential-advisors/

July 25, 2012 at 12:26 am

Dear Professor Karen, Thank you very much for guiding prospective Ph.D students towards the realization of their dreams. These essential things add up in a big way to help secure an admit. It becomes a bit confusing as to how to convey all your thoughts to the professors and yet be concise in your approach. After all you just get once chance to hit the bull’s eye.

Thank you for your timely help.

Regards, Ashwini

July 25, 2012 at 9:41 am

Hello Professor Karen,

Thank for sharing this king of information.. Could tell what is subject line for seeking Phd Supervisor. And could you send the separate email for asking about that..

Thank You..

July 31, 2012 at 5:27 pm

Dear Professor Karen, Thanks so much for your help , it is highly helpful as I am in the process of communicating a potential Advisor . Hope I find an Advisor like you . By the way , Who Would Care Communucating With an anonm…… ?!

August 7, 2012 at 9:46 pm

It’s great to see you posting something like this, it has really helped me out. I was wondering though, I’m in a situation where there are two professors at the same University that I am interested in speaking with. Should I contact them both or just pick one and stick with it? They are in the same department, but are focused on different aspects of the same field (one is shellfish restoration and the other is shellfish aquaculture).

August 8, 2012 at 9:10 pm

It’s ok to contact both, but just disclose to each that you’re also contacting the other.

August 13, 2012 at 10:48 am

Thank you very much for you great input. Can you please post a followup email sample. I am working on one for about a week. But I think I came across rude.

Warm regards, Ashran

August 14, 2012 at 9:39 am

Thank you for your great post, that’s very helpful.

I have used your post as an email template and send it to several professors. About half of them respond positively. I think your template is a very good format for PhD application.

Could you also give me more suggestion on how to continue the communication with professors? shall I first talk about my own experience? Or I should do research about the professors’ current projects and talk about that. Thanks very much

Best regards,

Ruoyu(Ryan)

August 25, 2012 at 10:55 am

Dear Prof. Karen,

I would like to thank you for your post, it is very helpful. I am in the process of communicating with two potential Advisors and this will be my last effort to attend a PhD.

Best Regards,

August 29, 2012 at 5:14 am

Thank you very much for this post. I am about writing my very first letter to a potential supervisor. I hope with these few tips you shared, that I get a good response.

Best regards.

September 2, 2012 at 3:28 am

thank you very much for your effort, i just want to ask if i can use this form to contact a professor in my faculty and i took some clases with him before

September 3, 2012 at 1:50 am

September 3, 2012 at 1:15 pm

Is it ever ok to send more than one inquiry to professors in the same department? Especially if it’s a large department?

September 3, 2012 at 2:28 pm

Yes, it’s ok, as long as you disclose in the email that you are doing so.

September 4, 2012 at 10:59 pm

Dear Karen, I’ve finished my master about 5 years ago. since then, I am working in research institutes. I want to apply for a one-year research fellowship abroad which needs to prepare research proposal. I do not know how to choose my subject. If I ask about it from a potential supervisor, would it be harmful?? It is very kind of you replying. Bests, Mary

September 5, 2012 at 10:23 am

Yes that would be harmful. the expectation is that you have a full-fledged research program of your own.

September 11, 2012 at 3:36 am

Thank you for your reply but do you agree with me that it is really a difficult decision what to choose for your PhD topic which is innovative and also appealing to yourself and others??

September 11, 2012 at 6:09 am

No, not necessarily. I think most phd students have a deep impulse or drive to do a topic and it just flows out of them. that was the case for me, certainly, and most others I know. If you don’t have that, I think doing the Ph.D. might be difficult.

September 17, 2012 at 8:40 pm

Thank you! I’m terribly nervous about communicating with professors–I was always the kid that sat by the door and snuck away at the end of class because I was too nervous to talk to adults–and the sample letter was hugely helpful in formatting the inquiry I just sent. Thank you, thank you for helping us would-be grad students not look dumb!

September 19, 2012 at 5:26 am

Dear Professor Karen, Thank you for posting such important information. I actually got your information after i sent my first email to my potential supervisor. I understand i made many mistakes. Now it has been days since i sent it. So will wait the response. God help me! My question for you, is it appropriate to contact another professor from the same university & the same department in case i get no response from the first professor?

Thank you very much,

Mesfin G. (Ethiopia)

September 19, 2012 at 10:34 am

Yes, you can do that. Just disclose that you have.

September 19, 2012 at 11:48 am

I wrote to one of the potential advisor and he has replied back the same day with a request for cv.

Can you please advise me for the tips for CV? I am in the University town. Do you think it is a good idea if I request him for a meeting?

thanks guneet

September 19, 2012 at 1:00 pm

Read the post, Dr. Karen’s Rules fo the Academci CV.

I would not meet him yet.

September 25, 2012 at 9:59 am

Thanks for this awesome post. I followed your advices and wrote an e-mail to potential faculty for Ph.D program that I want to join. And it worked very well. I received an e-mail back from him the following morning! I did not ask whether he had time to talk to me though, and I only asked whether he is accepting students this year. His e-mail was very brief (2 sentences), saying # of students he is accepting, and he encourages me to apply. Should I send another brief ‘thank-you’ e-mail? If so, should I try to talk to him more about his group/program? or would it be better to just keep it as ‘thank-you’ e-mail? I would very much appreciate your time and help!

October 7, 2015 at 5:26 am

what did you reply to the professor? I got same response.

Professor encouraged me to apply in the admissions. and he wrote nothing else.

December 12, 2016 at 1:36 pm

can you show your email to apply for phd i’d like to apply for phd program and want to contact w?th faculty member about the application and asking for schollarship.

September 26, 2012 at 1:55 am

Dear Karen Have you any suggestion for applying together with our spouse!! My husband and I are planning to attend in a same school. how should we contact with the potential supervisor?? Do we have to mention this in our first email? Do we have to send emails separately?? How can we improve our chance to get admitted in same place???

September 26, 2012 at 5:45 am

Thank you for your info. I found your advice reassuring. I have one question though. I have had some good responses and offers in Europe. Now I am planning to apply to some high-ranked US universities for a research position in electronics. My master’s institution in Sweden is not that famous which I perceived as a disadvantage. How much weight does professors in the US give to GRE and grade when selecting students for a PhD? My GRE (Q:800, V~510) and B+ GPA.

Thank you again. Daniel

September 27, 2012 at 6:16 am

i faced the same problem. i’ve sent email to one prof at uni. X, but after 3 weeks, he didint reply me. so i’ve sent another email tp another prof at uni. Y… after few hours he reply saying, im ready to supervise you, welcome to uni Y.

Then, a week after that, the Prof from Uni X replied me saying. plese send your 2 pages proposal for my consideration.

What should i replied him? Seeking for your kind opinion…..

September 29, 2012 at 11:53 am

Dear Dr. Karen Hello, Thank you very much for your helping. I’ve finished my master (marine biology) about 1 years ago and i would like to continue my study in PhD, but i don’t know, how i can to apply how i can obtain Scholarship and etc. Is it possible that i send email to head department and ask him/her about that? Would you please give me any advice or direction about that. Thanks in advance Regards Parisa A.Salimi

September 29, 2012 at 1:11 pm

Thank you very much. I am a senior, finishing up my B.S., and in the process of applying to Ph.D. programs. Writing to professors can be extremely intimidating. I found that your example was a wonderful tool for organizing the information and thoughts that have lead me to apply the my individual programs.

October 8, 2012 at 12:33 am

To what detail would I need to present my hypothesis?

October 12, 2012 at 11:20 am

Dear Karen there were great tips i have never known. i just want to know if it works if i mention that i completed a first year of PhD in my home country and i dont want to pursue it any more or not? What if i guess my publication is not enough strong to compete with other candidates in the university i want to apply for? Does it mean i will not be able to attract a supervisor? It is a big problem in my mind and i dont know how to deal with.???

October 15, 2012 at 7:31 am

Dear professor Karen, Thank you for this advice. could you please advice me about few matters. i have completed my M.Sc in Biomedical Genetics last year and now i am planning to do my PhD in genetics in Canada, for that i would like to contact a supervisor and in my letter what all the information should i have to include and another problem is, i am planning to publish an article in the last of this month i have already send to the journal, so whether i should try to contact the adviser after the article is published or i should contact the adviser now itself as there are only limited seats for PhD . please help me Thank you

October 16, 2012 at 9:00 am

DEAR COMMENTERS TO THIS “HOW TO WRITE AN EMAIL TO A POTENTIAL PH.D. ADVISOR” BLOG POST: I AM UNABLE TO RESPOND INDIVIDUALLY TO ALL OF THE REQUESTS FOR ADVICE IN THIS COMMENT THREAD. I KNOW THAT PEOPLE DESPERATELY NEED GUIDANCE ABOUT THIS CRITICAL TRANSITION INTO PHD PROGRAMS, BUT THE LARGE VOLUME OF REQUESTS FOR ADVICE THAT I RECEIVE HERE ON THE BLOG AND IN MY EMAIL INBOX PREVENTS ME FROM RESPONDING TO INDIVIDUAL QUERIES. I APOLOGIZE AND WISH YOU THE BEST. IF OTHERS WISH TO PROVIDE RESPONSES I WELCOME THEM. SINCERELY, KAREN KELSKY

October 20, 2012 at 12:09 am

thank you so much.

October 22, 2012 at 4:40 am

hello Thank you so much for this site, but what should be the subject of our emails?

October 23, 2012 at 6:29 pm

“My specific project will likely focus on xxxx, and I am particularly interested in exploring the question of xxxxx.”

While the second part of this sentence is fine, I’d be rather cautious about the first half. I am in the process of writing a letter to a potential supervisor myself and have gone to talk to different professors in my current university to ask for advice. I do have a topic in mind, but almost everyone told me NOT to mention a specific topic in the e-mail but rather general idea. One of the professors even told me that more often than not the person who says they have something specific in mind will be stubborn about changing their topic (because let’s be honest, PhD topics change) and consequently not asked for an interview.

Then again, I’m speaking from an European’s point of view. Maybe the grad school application approach is different in the States.

October 24, 2012 at 9:12 am

My advice reflects US expectations.

January 11, 2016 at 4:25 pm

I think you are right in that the approach is different in different countries. I am in Australia and I have met up with a university professor. He told me that most people would not be able to choose their own PHD topic and that it is important to be flexible while still making sure you will enjoy the topic you end up doing. This is because the professors apply for grants on specific topics and then need students to do that topic in their PHD. The only way you could do your own topic is if you do a self-funded PHD, i.e. apply for grants yourself. For this reason I will be including broad areas of interest in my emails rather than specific topics.

January 15, 2017 at 3:49 am

Hi Laura, I saw your reply and I though of send you this message as I am in Australia too and planning to work on my PhD. If usually we have to work on professors projects, I couldn’t find much published topics /projects online. The only thing I found was interests of supervisors and in few universities some research projects but not relevant to my field. I hope you can give me some guidance.

August 5, 2022 at 1:39 pm

Thank you, so helpful that it confirms the similar advice I got from a reliable source.

October 26, 2012 at 12:17 pm

that was a good manuscript sample for the astudents who intend to applying and they first language is’nt english.thank u

November 6, 2012 at 8:20 am

Thank you for your advice! Could you also suggest what I should include/how I should organize an email to a professor I met at a conference but don’t know well? Thanks again in advance!

November 23, 2012 at 2:32 pm

Thank you so much for your blog!

I am currently applying to graduate school programs and was wondering if you had any advice on interviews. Some programs do on-campus interviews, and others do phone/Skype interviews. I was wondering what I should expect.

November 27, 2012 at 9:51 am

Hi Karen, Thanks for the advice. I am an undergraduate student and will be applying for graduate school in the Fall of 2013, but I need to ask graduate schools if they will accept my pre-requisites for Speech Pathology because it varies at different schools… What would your advice be to go about emailing them?

November 28, 2012 at 1:22 am

Dear Prof. Karen Kelsky,

Thank you very much on posting such a wonderful e-mail template. It helped me a lot. I was wondering if you could kindly help me about writing ‘ Statement of purpose’ (SOP). I tried on my own and took the help of many seniors but all was in vain. I will be aplying for a masters degree in US for fall 2013 and I am very desperate to write a good enough SOP.

I would be obliged if you could reply as soon as possible. Thanks very much

December 28, 2012 at 4:26 am

thank you very much for your valuable hints

January 15, 2013 at 3:53 am

Thanks for providing such a nice insight and useful suggestions for admissions. I am 44 and wish to do an engineering MASc in Canada. Will my age(44) go against me ?? I am working in government of India R&D sector and can get a leave (without pay) for two years only (otherwise I would have opted for a PhD). I Will require funding. I hold a patent in Canada (should I mention that in my email ? This patent however is for a practical device and not related to professor’s field so much…)

January 16, 2013 at 12:58 am

Dear Professor Karen, Thanks for your suggestion . However, I am having a problem. I could not find any publication or research work available on the internet of the supervisor I want to work with. So what sort of comment(regarding his work) may I make which can help me grabbing his attention? I am a prospective MSc student.

Best regards Sanjoy

February 19, 2013 at 3:14 pm

Dear Karen, Your description was very helpful on how to write the e-mail, but what continues to stump me is what to put into the subject line. During my time as an undergraduate, I have had many professors tell my classes to chose our subject lines wisely because they delete mail not directly related to their classes or from faculty memebers. What would be short, to the point, and attention getting as a subject so the professor doesn’t just immediately delete the e-mail without reading it?

Best Regards, Danielle

August 15, 2013 at 3:46 am

I concur. I just finished composing my email to a potential Professor in an Ivy league school, and I am now confronted with the question of what subject would be appropriate for my mail. Please Karen, your help is really needed. Thanks

October 14, 2014 at 2:55 pm

This is probably of no use to you now, but she answered it in the above comments already. “Inquiry from a Prospective Graduate Student”

February 20, 2013 at 11:55 am

Very thanks Karen about this informations, it was so helpful to me. Regards >>

February 25, 2013 at 8:58 pm

Thank you so much for such a nice and informative article.I was about to send an email to professor with many mistakes. I have just visited your site and found your page likes on facebook are 3999 and i would be the lucky one to make it 4000. So congratulations from my side on reaching 4000 likes in FB.

Thank you again. Regards, Engr Nouman Khattak Junior Design Engineer BAK Consulting Engineers.

February 26, 2013 at 11:33 am

thank you, Nouman! good luck.

February 25, 2013 at 10:30 pm

Dear Professor Karen, Thanks for your valuable post . You have provide a good idea to write in a correct and polite way. This post is very helpful and guiding me to write an email for a professor.

Best regards Lia P.

March 2, 2013 at 4:30 pm

Dear Karen, I must confess that I have been terrified just thinking about contacting the professor in a program that I am interesting in. After reading your posting and your template, I feel so much better. I plan to pursue a master degree in biomedical engineering with a focus in medical instrumentation at the university of Saskatchewan. I have been on the program website but not quite sure how to address the section in your template: my specific project will focus on xxx and I will be interested in addressing the question of xxx Furthermore, how does one credit you for the information? Sincerely, Linus Luki

March 5, 2013 at 10:15 pm

Dear Professor Karen, Thank you for posting this guide! It’s taken the fear out of initially contacting a potential advisor. I was wondering if you have any suggestions or additions to this for students looking to apply to M.Sc. coursework programs? Tailoring the program to my interests is heavily dependent on my potential advisor, however I also feel that any competent faculty member would be able to assist me with this. I’m now questioning the value I’m placing on selecting the right advisor to contact. Thank you kindly in advance for any advice. Ana M.

March 8, 2013 at 7:10 am

Thanks for this very useful post Karen. I do have a question – it has been 9 years since I graduated from University (BSc. Hons) and have been working in a separate field since graduation (except 1 year spent teaching the Sciences to high school students). I am now looking to return to complete an MSc in Environmental Management. Should I mention/explain my break from the field in my email? What would be your suggestion on the best way to approach this?

March 26, 2013 at 9:21 pm

I just wanted to say I agree wholeheartedly about following up if you don’t get a response (and you’re serious about the professor and/or line of work). I wrote to a professor enquiring about full time openings in her lab but she didn’t reply. I followed up after 2 weeks, and she replied almost 2 seconds later apologizing for not getting in touch sooner because she was out sick and the email then got forgotten. In this case, there was a happy ending. The prof flew me out for an interview, and I’m still at the same lab working full time. I was never more glad of my persistent stick-to-it-ness.

p.s., I should probably add I didn’t send a form email and that my email was tailored specifically for that lab and the research the PI does.

May 29, 2013 at 6:00 am

Dear Professor Karen, Thank you so much for this valuable post. It was so informative. I am aspiring to do Phd in fall 2014. I would like to the right time for contacting professors regarding Phd and what are the things I should mention other than the info provided in your article

June 5, 2013 at 2:34 am

Dear Prof. Karen, Thank you so much for this very useful and valuable post. I would like to ask question about , how to reply a mail after a supervisor giving negative feedback for an application.

June 11, 2013 at 8:50 am

Hi Karen. Your advice was very useful in helping me figure out and frame my email to a potential supervisor. There is one concern however, and I have been frantically searching online for a tip on the same. I am a student doing my Masters (Thesis-based) and after three years I have decided to switch to a different university for a Course-based degree in the same program. I have completed 6 courses and a part of my research but it took me a while to figure out that research (long term research) does not suit me very well. My confusion is if I should mention that in my email and if I do then how to put it across in a polished manner, so that it does not have any adverse effects on my application. I would appreciate if you could kindly advise me on this. Thank you.

June 27, 2013 at 2:22 am

Thank you for your advice. I’m graduated 3 years ago (MSc.). I have 2 papers published and attended some workshop and 2 national congresses. I had been working as a teacher assistant. Meanwhile I had to work that is not related to my education for 2 years. Now I’m worried and I don’t know how to explain about the gap since the graduation up to now. Could you please advise me about that? thank you very much.

June 30, 2013 at 8:04 am

Hi Ms Karen,

Thanks very much for such an incredible post. It will really guide us through the application process and applying for funding opportunities. I can not imagine what would have happened if we did not have such a nice person like you around us! Really appreciate your work. Thanks Shabnam

July 12, 2013 at 10:47 am

This is a great resource for learning how to properly contact advisers, thank you for making this!

I think it would also benefit for us to know about social/Facebook etiquette when involving potential graduate advisers. Should we befriend them on Facebook? I could see reasons for and against do that. Seeing the posts, pics, and etc., could be helpful in getting to know the adviser better. On the other hand, if the adviser seems something on your page he/she doesn’t like, you run the risk of losing them. What do you? Maybe right another blog on social/ Facebook etiquette with advisers? Thanks!

July 29, 2013 at 7:09 pm

Dear Pro Karen,

Thank you for your advice. It’s help me a lot. I have already emailed my prospective supervisor, however i found out we have different personalities, and i’m afraid that i can’t work well with him. I’m decided to find another supervisor but I not know how to tell him. Besides, he work on human isolates ( microbe and molecular field) while im interested to deal with animal isolates as i’m animal science student.

I hope you can give any suggestion on this matter. Thank you..

August 2, 2013 at 6:21 am

Thank you for this guide, I was lost what to write for a potential thesis adviser.

August 4, 2013 at 1:08 pm

Thanks for this informative post! Mentioning the potential research focus in the email is still a sticking point for me (“My specific project will likely focus on xxxx, and I am particularly interested in exploring the question of xxxxx”). In my case, there are many research questions I am interested in exploring within a broader topic. I don’t want to be generic, noncommittal, or scattered, but I also don’t want to be dishonest by picking a research question and declaring it my particular interest. How can I reflect this openness while still showing I am focused?

August 14, 2013 at 4:14 pm

Dear prof. Karen,

Thank you for this great blog and willingness to share your professional knowledge. Could you please, very briefly, address two issues: 1. If a topic can be supervised by several members of faculty and is rather specific (it`s in social sciences), would it be appropriate to address one (presumably “highest ranking”) professor at the department, but at the end to kindly ask that if she/he is not interested or not able to be advisor to recommend to me someone in the department who could be more appropriate/willing/able/suitable to contact? I don’t think anyone has raised this, but coming from Eastern Europe, I don’t know if this would be considered “weak”, or “improper”, or “insulting”?

2. This is not so important, but I read few people asked similar question and it remained unanswered, but is also in way related to the previous one. I am intending to apply with my partner/fiancee who is in the same discipline, we met on first year, and since have studied, worked and lived together (I am 26, she is 39), and are very successful in it and highly compatible and productive when together – studying the same issue, but from quite different perspectives and different aspects of it (we might need to have different supervisors). Would you consider it to be a drawback that we are applying together for PhD in the US? And do you think that in similar cases it is better to send one e-mail to a Prof., or two separate, or two separate to two Prof.s?

Once more, thank you very much, I assume it`s a hassle. Best regards, Milos

PS – Your text on passives was very useful not just for British, but I would say for most of Europe. PPS – Please answer my post (at least No. 1), it was my birthday yesterday and I am so depressed! 🙂

August 14, 2013 at 9:17 pm

Yes you can do as you say re question 1. Well actually, don’t do it in the initial email. Wait until you’ve had a negative reply and then ask. To ask up front would be a little awkward. Re question 2: it’s fine for you two to both apply but you must both apply independently and contact the profs independently.You can let drop informally that you are a couple, but formally in the apps, it’s got to be entirely individual.

August 14, 2013 at 10:44 pm

Thank you very much! When we are accepted (implementing positive (American) attitude), we will write you an e-mail on issues we had as Eastern European candidates and how we successfully resolved them! 🙂 Thank you, once again, very much, your whole blog gave us a lot of positive energy and motivation to apply for PhD! 🙂 Best regards, Milos

August 20, 2013 at 3:59 am

Dear Professor Karen,

Thank you for giving such a nice template. I must say this would definitely help me in writing it to the professor for my phd program. This is awesome. I was always confused how to approach to the professor, i did get the reply for the emails i have sent to different school but this will make it more precise and would be easy for a professor to explain. Really appreciate it.

Best regards, Komal Sharma

September 1, 2013 at 12:05 pm

I think you just saved me from being just-another-email-to-delete in my potential supervisor’s inbox. I was going to send a poorly written email but decided to get some tips on what exactly to include in my first letter and I stumbled upon your excellently written article. I really appreciate you taking time out to write these articles.

I am going to apply for a masters degree and I am currently writing a letter to some of the professors in whose research I am interested in.

Thank you, Abdullah Siddiqui

September 20, 2013 at 8:06 am

Prof. Karen, Thanks for this insightful post. I’ve already contacted some Professors for possible Ph.D. supervision and the content of my e-mail was close to (but not as detailed) as the template here because I was trying to avoid sending a lengthy mail. However, I’ve not gotten any reply for days now. Please, I need your advice; should I resend my mails following this template or … ? Here’s a sample of the mail I sent on Tue, 17th, Sept., 2013:

Hello Prof. XXX,

I am XXX, a graduate of XXX and a current research student at the XXX University. I am writing you this email to inform you of my interest in your field of research (XXX). My current Masters research is in XXX and I have also been researching into more problems in this area. I have been able to come up with a research proposal for proposed Ph.D. and want to solicit your support in seeing my dream come true by accepting to supervise my work. Sequel to my preliminary findings, I make bold to reiterate that I have come to respect your insight and experience in this field and I am open to suggestions and/or corrections to my drafted proposal.

I have attached to this mail, a copy of my CV, a brief proposal and an abstract of the same proposal so you can quickly go through it.

I am currently applying for XXX Scholarship and I need an approval letter from my supervisor to complete my application. In case you will not be able to supervise me, I will appreciate it if you can suggest some other people whom you know can supervise my work. I look forward to reading from you soonest to allow me complete the application on time.

Thank you, Sir. Sincere regards

September 21, 2013 at 7:23 am

Hello Prof Karen, Thank you for generous tips and advice. I got tired to get such kind of information to relief my stresses. On the other hand, I would expect that I will need a far more deeper guidance about my PhD application road map. I have selected USCD (Materials Science + Chemical Eng.), Carnegie Mellon U. (Materials Science), U of South Florida (Chemical Engineering). My challenge that I will be facing both the TOEFL on Oct 25th and GRE on Dec 19th. Additionally, I have my courses in the master that I study here in Brazil, UFRGS. While the sites of the aforementioned schools state that it is not advised to contact faculties as they can not give any prior admission unless to submit all the application materials; test scores, transcripts, etc, it is welcome to contact them if you want to talk about the research they do or you want to do. The problem is that I am missing mind duel to all this timed tasks that I have to carry out simultaneously. During that I feel that an optional transaction like initiating a contact with a professor who shares my research interests – specially they won’t respond mostly – is not so advisable. Do you agree with me? Second point I study here in Brazil in Portuguese. As an Egyptian, I used to study engineering in a mixture of English and Arabic. Thus, it was difficult to understand and communicate with the teacher and classmates during discussion. After all, it is a MSc and understanding to solve questions in exams is important than understanding the language itself. So that I used to study in English and then make such conversion from English to Portuguese in exam times. As a result, I usually get B grades. I got only one A. Do you think that will lower my chance of getting admission? Third about recommendation letters, I do not have the complete ability to determine which faculty professors I should ask to recommend me. For example, my supervisor is really a nice woman and supportive. However, some times she looks like angry from me and neither I nor my colleagues know a specific reason for that. I just try to relax, supervise, and educate myself. Like that, shall i ask her to recommend me or not. Other professor who was my 65 year old supervisor in Egypt. He was considering me as a son to him and he has written many recommendations to me. But due to out-of-control problems in my work as a TA in the same dept, I feel like he has changed towards me. I am sure that he still appreciate my hard work and traits and he is the most knowledgeable person about me. Shall I ask him to recommend me?

October 5, 2013 at 7:20 pm

I am happy to find this template. I definitely believe it is a great help. I have one concern though. I saw you stated that age is a big risk. I am applying to PhD in finance programs for fall 2014. I will 40 years soon. I hold a triple major and an MBA.

Do you have any advice for me?

Thanks in advance.

October 27, 2013 at 5:54 pm

Thank you for the excellent resource. I just used it to email a prospective graduate advisor. I feel I ALWAYS ask this question, but panels are often targeted on larger problems like GRE, NSF, and personal statement advice.

I was wondering if you could answer two questions.

1) What should a good signature for an undergraduate student look like at the end of an email?

2) How important is a personal website in the application process?

November 4, 2013 at 12:35 pm

Wow!!!!! What an amazing and informative resource. Thank you so much Karen for taking precious time to advice complete strangers on something extremely worthwhile…it takes someone with a good heart to do just that. I (and many others as I’ve seen from the comments) have really benefited from this post on contacting potential supervisors. May God bless you so much beyond your wildest dreams!

November 7, 2013 at 3:10 am

Have you any suggestion for applying together with our spouse!! My husband and I are planning to attend in a same university. please let me know how I can write such an email.

November 14, 2013 at 12:00 am

I really appreciate this post. I was trying to write an e-mail to my potential advisor and had hard time figuring out what to write about.

I referenced your format when I was writing my e-mail. It was a great help.

Sincerely, Cho

November 14, 2013 at 1:57 am

I sure could have used this about two weeks ago. Thank you for providing this template and sharing your information, it is greatly appreciated. If I may ask a question Prof. Karen, is it any good to send a second email with this template to a prof? I sent a less dense email to two potential advisors about two weeks ago and I was hoping I could redeem myself as it appears my first emails were not impressive. Do you have any thoughts on the matter?

December 5, 2013 at 12:18 am

i recently completed my graduation in biotechnology. i want to per-sue my PhD, but it is difficult for me how to write a impressive email to a supervisor who really take interest in my mail.

December 12, 2013 at 8:18 am

Prof.Karen,Thank you very much for your helpful posts.

I have a question about communication with a as a future research group member. what should we do when we feel that the coordinator is not very straightforward( in case it is impossible to meet him/her in their office).

Should we talk about it with our professors? given that most cases they are supporter of each other.

December 17, 2013 at 5:20 am

Dear Prof. Kelsky,

Many thanks for such an informative post. Some of your answers in the thread are very helpful as well.

Do you think it is a good idea to send a draft research proposal to a potential supervisor when approaching him/her?

Kind regards,

December 18, 2013 at 12:14 am

Great posting. I sent a professional email to a my prospective adviser and she gave ma a short

“I do expect to accept one, maybe two, students for next year. I will look forward to seeing your application! Let me know if you have further questions in the mean time.”

I am not sure if I should keep the conversation or leave it at that. I kept it professional, stated my goals and interest and my interest in her research. I don’t want to send unnecessary questions and make myself look bad

January 16, 2014 at 12:29 pm

Can you please advice on whether or not it is a good idea to make a first email contact with a potential advisor, after having submitted the PhD application to the university?

January 18, 2014 at 1:12 am

Dear Professor Dr. Karen,

I am an international student. Your article, “how to Write an Email to a Potential Ph.D. Advisor/Professor”, had helped shining the way to communicate with professors who live overseas.

After sending my email to three places, I received a good reply from a prospective professor who told me that I was a good fit to his/her laboratory.

Because this is only one month after submitting my applications, I do not know whether the email from the professor will guarantee my chance of acceptance. At least his/her reply helps me narrow down the researches that I should pursue.

Recently, I came across a problem. I found a university in which there are more than one professor that I would like to work with.

In fact, this problem is often, but I cannot make a decision for this department. Could you please give me advice on whether I should send the letter to more than one professor in the same department or what positive or negative consequences that I might have encounter.

Thank you for taking your time.

Sincerely yours,

Suvita Swana

February 3, 2014 at 11:45 am

February 20, 2014 at 4:34 am

thank you Mrs. Karen for such a good post, i read it and its quite helping .i wanted to ask you that would it be good idea to go for a Ph.D after completing M.Sc. while you have a business mind more than an academic? I have completed BS in Electrical Engineering in 2013. Secondly i need to support my family after MSc so would i be able to support them while pursuing a PhD.

March 14, 2014 at 2:14 pm

Dear, Dr. Karen: Thank you very much for this helpful post. Ahmed Eltayeb Sudan

March 17, 2014 at 11:54 am

Hello Dear, Thank you very much for your valuable post. If you don’t mind, I want to share with you my letter which I prepared for my Master’s Course in Surgical Oncology in a Canadian university for your experienced guidance.

Thank you Najmul Islam Sabbir

April 3, 2014 at 2:23 am

Hi Karen, Thank you for this post. I just discovered it yesterday,before sending the first version 🙂 I wonder- I am about to finish my master in Germany when I finished my bachelor in Israeli and worked in between. Should I write all of this info in the first paragraph? I feel it might be too much? (CV style) I will be happy to hear your opinion before sending. Thanks a lot in advance. Jasmin

April 4, 2014 at 5:49 am

Thank you Prof. Karen. This letter provides necessary way to connect PhD guide. thank you once again.

April 16, 2014 at 9:55 pm

I can’t help but echo what someone else had already mentioned in the earlier posts. I feel like you have to suck up to the professor to get any real attention. I’m a straight forward guy, and I don’t understand why we can’t just keep it short and sweet, like two or three sentences, with a CV/resume.

I don’t think I can bring myself to go into detail about how great the professor is, or how I’ve read all his/her papers, or how excited I am to start my research career. It’s politics, and I hate that game.

May 8, 2014 at 12:40 am

Oh my goodness, thank you soooo much!! I am so glad i stumbled upon this right before i was about to send out my email! I’m contacting a masters supervisor, and i can assure you, my email was going to be along the lines of the “instant delete” one!! Thank you so so much! I think you just got me into a masters!!

May 29, 2014 at 3:41 am

thank you for your brief guideline for the most of us. i will try this way and if will success i will tell you.

June 11, 2014 at 2:11 am

Dear professor Karen, This is really the most important and fantastic system of writing for admission application i ever had. Surprisingly, I was facing a big challenge how to write a constructive email for consideration of my graduate program this year. I have now alleviated this mountainous problem. Thank you so much Keren!

June 22, 2014 at 6:17 am

Dear professor Karen, Hello. I am a graduate student in physical chemistry (Master of Science). I am going to continue my study in Computational Chemistry fields for PhD degree in abroad. I preferred an Email (see bellow) to Ph.D. positions. Would you please read this letter and say you point of view about, is this letter suitable for sending to professors?

Dear professor ….,

Hello. I am a graduate student in physical chemistry (Master of Science). I have worked in Computational and Theoretical chemistry for more 3 years. I have many publications in good journals (see attached files). I have very good experiences in theoretical and computational chemistry (Ab initio, DFT, Post-HF, QM/MM) and also working with computer systems, UNIX operating systems and programming.

After graduation for gaining more experience and knowledge, I went to Isfahan University of Technology, department of chemistry, as a Research Assistant and continued my research under Professor H. Farrokhpour.

I am going to continue my study in Computational Chemistry fields for PhD degree. I visited your homepage and I think your research areas are fit to my interest, very well and I am interested in working with you as my supervisor.

Regarding my characteristics, I am a reliable, organized, and so enthusiastic student. I can learn everything fast. I am sure that I will carry over the same enthusiasm and skill in doing my PhD as I know that my background will prove to be an effective match for your demands. Therefore, I would like to have the opportunity to develop my abilities, for which I am confident that I have the skills, knowledge and competence. In addition, my English language is good and I can read, speak, write and listen. For more information, please see my CV in attached file.

Thank you for your time and consideration and I look forward to hearing from you. Yours Sincerely, Mostafa Abedi

Research Assistant,

Department of Chemistry, Isfahan University of Technology, Iran

June 30, 2014 at 7:37 am

I have sent a very similar e-mail to my prospective supervisor. It been a week but I have not received a reply yet.I want to ask if he received my email how should I write an email?

September 11, 2014 at 6:32 am

Thank you so much for posting this information. I have used this information to contact my desired mentor, and I received a response within 24 hours. The professor has now asked for a writing sample. After performing multiple edits, the sample is ready to be sent. Is there a specific response I should give when I send this sample? Thank you again.

December 17, 2014 at 12:36 am

I believe the nice thing about this post is that it reminds you to tell something about yourself; your GPA, your experience, your good qualities. I think those are always worth mentioning. The other really nice thing is that it tells you to get to know the supervisor’s research (after all, why would you want a supervisor whose research was not interesting?) But I disagree with being too concerned about pleasing the professor. I think honesty is way better, and I think people should remember that it’s not just the professor evaluating the potential student, but also the student evaluating the professor; if the professor is always busy, he probably won’t have time for you either. Sucking up will eventually *always* fail. Also, by attempting to please the professor too much I think people are supporting a system where professors pick their students based not on their qualifications and interests but how much they like the person. Just my two cents.

December 17, 2014 at 8:12 am

There is no ‘sucking up’ in this email.

January 2, 2015 at 9:51 pm

Thank you so much for this great post! I am wondering if it is ok to mention my undergrad and grad project? Because it is related directly to the professor’s research area.

January 5, 2015 at 8:53 am

January 25, 2015 at 9:28 pm

Hi Karen, thank you for sharing, it really help.

After i read this article, there is one thing i need to ask you. On the statement above: “My specific project will likely focus on xxxx, and I am particularly interested in exploring the question of xxxxx.” I wonder how specific i should fill on the xxxx and xxxxx. Do you mean that i Should fill it with my research title? I was intend to fill it with my research title but then i was confused because i have some alternative for my research project.

Thank you and i appreciate any answer.

March 19, 2015 at 7:22 pm

Hello Karen,

Thank you very much for the blog. it was useful to get to know about Prof’s mindset. I am getting some replys with the help of it.

May 22, 2015 at 8:36 pm

This is an awesome post, I am using it to contact some researchers of my own.

Thanks. Neelam

August 10, 2015 at 2:53 am

Thanks for your post. I have been thinking of the most polite way of going about this and I think I just found one

October 20, 2015 at 11:34 am

Thank you for writing this post. In my day job, I frequently write professional correspondence to senior management, clients, and team members. That being said, I’m a little nervous about my PhD application. I appreciate the few tips I pulled from these examples.

March 7, 2016 at 11:28 pm

Dear Karen Would you please send me a template for PhD application? I am a PhD student in my country but I want to apply for a part-time PhD research as PhD research opportunity in a foreign country. Thank you Best regards, Mahboob

March 9, 2016 at 9:26 pm

No, I don’t send templates for any type of writing, and especially not for Ph.d. applications.

May 30, 2016 at 6:21 pm

Thank you for your advice, it really helped me. I sent e-mail to a professor and he answered me asking to send CV, Cover letter, and Personal statement. Would you please help me about what should I write in the cover letter and what is the difference between it and personal statement.

Thanks a lot.

May 31, 2016 at 3:19 pm

We offer this help on a case by case basis. Please email me at [email protected] .

March 25, 2017 at 5:12 am

Dear Karen:

Your kind help is helpful to many new graduates.

Sincerely, Khurram ali shah

August 18, 2016 at 1:32 pm

Dear Dr. Karen,

Thank you for your informative article. I have a rather trivial question about … style (?)

At the end of the text of the email, is there a reason for using a comma after “Thank you very much” instead of a period (dot) or an exclamation mark? Thank you very much!

August 30, 2016 at 5:42 am

Dear Karen I must say you have done a good job in helping people like me regarding this area. Thank you so much for sharing. I would like to know if you offer any paid services in relation to research in general. Secondly, I am currently working on my research proposal and will be consulting potential supervisors very soon, however I do have a big worry. I am 32 years and I intend to start my Ph.D next year. I have 2 Bachelor of Science Degrees and a Masters of Science Degree. I have never worked, all I ever did was go to universities.If the supervisor asks for my CV, which has only a list of courses I have undertaken, would it be OK if I told them I never worked? Do you think having never worked is a disadvantage for me to be considered for a Ph.D? Thank you

September 5, 2016 at 3:36 am

You are amazing for doing this. I found this absolutely helpful.

October 4, 2016 at 7:00 am

Just used your advices for a PHD request in Finland. Fingers crossed!

January 27, 2017 at 7:42 am

Great advice, I just used then in my Master’s application. Thank you!

February 19, 2017 at 9:13 am

Thanks, it gave me a boost.

May 19, 2017 at 6:07 pm

99% of the professors will ignore the email since it is too long, and they cannot afford to read 200 such long emails which come to their inbox every day.

March 28, 2018 at 2:11 pm

Good, but most importantly, “How do we reply for a response?”

[…] with the potential advisor is perhaps the most important element of all; refer to this post for advice on how to initiate the conversation. Ideally you want the advisor to commit to you ahead […]

[…] some good “how not to sound like an idiot when writing to a potential advisor” templates here and here. There are plenty more where these came from, so don’t sweat it if this is an area that […]

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[…] TPII is a great resource for students (of all education levels). Dr. Kelsky covers everything from contacting potential supervisors to mental illness in academia to getting tenure. She also offers paid services if you’re […]

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[…] have two websites about that subject, you can link here and here. But in short I can say […]

[…] made a list with all the academics conducting researches that might interest me. These were alternative supervisors that I could contact by email. Not only the ones doing similar stuff to what I was doing, but people whose style of supervision I […]

[…] emails daily and many, many requests from prospective students every year. You need to stand out. Here is a very thorough post about nailing the inquiry email. If you are able, try to arrange an informal […]

[…] How to Write an Email to a Potential Ph.D. Advisor/Professor. […]

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[…] OPTIONAL, IF NEEDED: The Professor is In (blog): How to Fire a Professor (from your committee), How to Write an E-Mail (to a potential research advisor) […]

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[…] supervisor is not your laurels. They can find that in your CV. It is the part where you establish common ground. You must be able to connect the dots between the professor’s research interests and your […]

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