How to Email a Professor About Joining Their Lab, From a Professor
CSProfKGD · x · 2026-09-29
It's graduate admissions season again. Inspired by Phillip Isola's post on doing a PhD in the age of AI, a professor shares a long-form guide on how to email professors about joining their lab.
The key insight: your goal is not to get admitted off one email, but to make the professor curious enough to open your CV, look at your work, or arrange a conversation. The difference between emails that work and those that don't isn't polish—it's whether the student convincingly shows genuine interest in the lab and the type of supervision offered, plus potential to succeed in grad school and do independent research.
This matters even more in the AI era: it has never been easier to generate a polished email that sounds professional while saying almost nothing. The article is structured as answers to common questions and framed as a living document, with other professors and students invited to add perspectives via Margin Notes.
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