美国教授如何判别学生是否有潜力~~

kobezhaowei

看到的，贴给大家~~~~
大家可以朝着这个方向努力哈~~
作者: Sanjoy Das, Assistant Professor,　Kansas State University

Ph.D. 1994,Louisiana State University. Evolutionary algorithms, neural networks,artificial intelligence, discrete optimization.


Internationalapplicants seeking assistantship/admission: please do not
send me emailsblindly without reading this.

Every day Ireceive emails from international candidates for information,
for advice, andespecially requesting financial assistance. Unfortunately, I
delete most ofthem without even reading them carefully. I get so many
irrelevant emailsthat cannot reply to each. Extremely rarely has one
caught myattention. Please do not send me emails without reading this
first. I am onlyinterested in corresponding to candidates who are
exceptional, andhave a strong interest and experience in my immediate
area of specialization,and I highly prefer ones with a Master's degree.

Here are twosample letters:

A sample letterthat will never get the candidate an assistantship with me:

Unwanted email

Respected sir,
I am veryinterested in going to the US for higher studies. I am seeking
admission andfinancial assistance in your esteemed University. I am
very interested inartificial intelligence and computer architecture. I have
programmingexperience in C++, C and ｊａｖａ. I am also familiar with
several softwarepackages in the Windows environment (MS Word, Excel
Spreadsheet etc.).I also have networking certification from NOVELL. My
GRE score is 2050,and I got 99 percentile in the TOEFL exam. I request you to spare a few momentsfrom your precious time to go
through myattached resume. Sir - if you are kind enough to offer me assistantship, Ipromise to work very hard for you. I have a very good academic record sinceprimary school. Alternately, can you tell me what are my chances of gettingassistantship from your department? Can you kindly inform me about the lastdates for Summer term 2002 before which I can apply?
Thank you for yourvaluable time,

                                            Yoursobediently
                                                  ABC

My comments: Isimply delete these emails, which I consider garbage . The person seems to betoo obsequious and flattering. In the emails that
I do read(occasionally), I do a first scan for keywords like "precious","respected" etc. deleting the email if I find one. Obviously theperson is not professional enough. The person is interested in artificialintelligence and computer architecture - these are quite unrelated areas,making me think that he is trying to cover as many professors as possible toget aid from any possible source. Besides, he does not have anything in supportof his claim (about his interest in artificial intelligence). He emphasizes onhis software skills, making me think that his goal is to get a programming  job in the US and higher studies is only toallow him access to the US job market. His GRE scores are OK, but notexceptional. He asks me to tell him what his chances of getting anassistantship are, elsewhere in the department. I have absolutely no way offinding that out, and even if I knew, I would not bother to reply back. He alsoasks me to give him information about summer deadlines. How am I supposed toknow that? (I would typically expect that this information should be availablefrom the University web site, or from the grad school, but my guess is as goodas yours.) Finally, this letter is too generic . He probably uses exactly thesame format for hundreds of email letters to various professors throughout the country,leaving no stone uncovered. I receive hundreds of email like this. Regretfully,I cannot answer everyone, and these applications do not interest me at all.



Now, here is aletter that would DEFINITELY attract my attention:
Excellent email

Dear Prof. Das,
I am applying toKSU (amongst other places) for a Ph.D., and I am very
interested in yourresearch areas. I would like to explore the possibility of
doing my researchwith you, with financial support. One possible area that would interest me alot is in applying Tikhonov regularization to your problem in computationalneuroscience, since I understand that neural data can be very noisy, and yetsparse. Alternately, I am also interested in applying evolutionary algorithmsto your genetic neural network parameter estimation.
 One of my other interests in in parallelprocessing. Are you considering parallel implementations for any of youroptimization/estimation algorithms?
 Considering that the projects that you listin your web site would probably be very computationally intensive, that may bea worthwhile strategy to pursue.
 I presented a paper entitled "HybridGradient Descent Based Training of Probabilistic Recurrent Networks" inthe International Conference on
Neural Networksand Image Processing, Bangalore, last year. It is a reviewed publication. Ifhave attached a copy of the article in pdf format.
 If you have available funds, and areinterested in my application please
let me know soon.
                                          Yours obediently
                                               XYZ

My comments: Thisis a straightforward letter from someone with a genuine interest in my area .He is an exceptional candidate. He has evinced a keen desire to learn, andalready has considerable mastery over my area of research . If I have anyfunding available, I would definitely try my very BEST to get this person .This person may have an MS degree, while many applicants have only a BS degree.

sitdown123

第二封信，真的很牛@

普渡哥

好贴！

magicbrian

自我总结一下：
do:
   1. 仔细分析教授的研究方向和喜好；
 2.  在申请信中说明教授的研究方向，结合自己的情况，让对方相信你能够极大的帮助教授进行研究；
 3.  可能的话，分析教授的课题研究中的缺陷或者是有研究价值的点，让教授相信你是有想法的青年
not do:
  1. 以自我为中心，单纯罗列自己的学习情况，让对方感觉自己完全不是针对自己，而是撒网捞鱼；
 2. 自己不是特别出彩的地方就不要罗列出来；
 3. 不要过多的请求对方为自己做事。

普渡哥

up

guomi32

好文顶之啊