Undergraduate research internships part 4— prepping for emails
Continuing on the path of cold mailing for securing internship opportunities, you are now faced with perhaps the more critical component of the entire process. Finding out whom to mail for internship opportunities. In the last article, we delved deep into resumes. With that finalised, you now have to start making a database of people you want to apply to. Although painstaking, this will help ease the process of tracking your emails later.
So, how do you start?
Start by making a database. It can be as simple as maintaining a list of people on Excel or Google Sheets or having a more comprehensive database on Notion or other database management platforms. The former options usually suffice. Your database only needs to contain relevant details about the faculty/researcher you want to apply to, the topics they work on, and their contact information (usually an e-mail ID). Start by making columns for each of these entries and make sure you update the sheet regularly.
Where to look?
In order to begin filling up your sheet, you can begin looking at the research faculty at your university/lab of choice. If you do not have a particular preference, you can check out the subject-wise ranking of universities on an index like Quacquarelli Symonds or US News. Make your way down from the top of the list and keep populating your database with people you want to work with. Depending on your profile, you might find quite a few universities at the top of these ranking lists (Like MIT and Stanford) to be too ambitious to get an internship at. However, you lose 100% of the chances you do not take. It might be some extra work, but do not shy away from applying to professors that interest you in those universities as well.
How do I search for people from a particular university?
Let us assume that you are searching for people at a university (let's call it X). Most universities have a directory for research on their homepage, which would direct you to the department of your choice (let’s assume that department to be AeroAstro). Alternatively, you can also google search for the AeroAstro department at university X and you will be redirected to the same webpage.
The following examples illustrate the same.
Once you navigate to the research directory, you can take a look at everyone working in a particular department. Usually, faculty members are affiliated to a research lab, the URL for which is usually linked to their profile. Alternatively, you can navigate to the website of a research lab/group and check out the personnel working there.
Note: Lab websites are usually common in websites for American Universities. While considering universities in Europe, you might come across some places which do not explicitly mention particular labs or research groups on their websites. Sometimes, the details of research groups are only available in their native language and the English version of the webpage does not contain relevant information. In those cases, consider translating entire web pages (especially true for German universities). In that case, get an idea about a professor’s work by looking at their recent publications.
How do I know/find out what a particular prof’s research interests are?
Usually, you will get a brief overview of a particular prof’s research interests on their faculty profile. However, there are chances that these profiles are not updated frequently. The best way to determine the current work of a particular professor/researcher is to check their publications on Researchgate or Google Scholar. These two are the most common resources to find the publication history of an individual. There are other websites like ORCID which are more prevalent in Europe. Try to sort their publications by year and take a look at their recently authored works, that will give you a good idea about their current engagements.
Multiple people work in a particular laboratory/research group. Who do I apply to?
Most laboratories/research groups have a set hierarchy consisting of lab heads/group leaders with sub-group leaders under them. If you are interested in a particular topic, write an email to the sub-group leader responsible for research on that topic. In addition to that, you can also carbon copy (cc) the lab head and the administrative assistant of a lab. This way, the lab head also knows about your interest in their laboratory.
If a professor is working on a topic individually, you can choose to carbon copy the postdoctoral researcher in your emails to the said professor. Professors are usually very busy and looping the postdoc in your email thread might increase your chances of getting a reply.
Also, while emailing people in a particular laboratory/ research group, address your mail to a faculty member (professors in the case of a university research group/scientist in case of a government or a private research lab). This is because research technicians, postdocs, and PhD students are generally not authorized to take any interns. It is only professors who can do that.
Should I be searching for faculty/researchers only in universities?
No, absolutely not. You can expand your scope by looking into a lot of government and private laboratories as well. For example, the Max Planck Society has a number of institutes in Germany. Similar is the case for Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres. You can also consider applying to big experimental centers like CERN and ITER. Both of them offer internships every year.
Is there an upper or lower limit on the number of people I should add to my list?
The short answer is no. Cold-mailing is dependent on a lot of factors. Some people get positive replies to their emails within the first 10 emails they send, others wait for 100–150 emails before they get their first positive reply. So be prepared for both situations.
This brings us to the end of this article. Take a few weeks to make your database before sending out emails. That gives you enough buffer period to keep populating the list with more entries whilst you send emails. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Try sending out as many emails as you can. The next article would talk about the last step in this process — drafting and sending cold emails.
If you have any questions or wish to discuss the content, you can reach out to me on Linkedin.
The content here is a reflection of my process of applying to research internships and my undergraduate thesis. I suggest you also converse with other people and get to know their process as well. If a technique different from the stuff mentioned here works for you, I suggest you stick to that. All the best!