Tips for getting good responses from professors

Communication with the professors can be one of the important steps in getting a letter of acceptance (LoA) from universities in the US.  Once we get the green light from them, it will possibly be easier to get LoA. In this article, I will share my experience when communicating with professors from various universities in the US.

I have communicated with a lot of professors from different universities, particularly from the list given by BPI. Their responses were varied, but all of them were good responses. Inevitably, some professors did not give responses at all, such as from the University of Washington, Ohio State University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Some professors, for example, those from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor and The University of Wisconsin at Madison, answered my email. Unfortunately, they acknowledged that they could not follow up on my application because my research interests were not relevant to their expertise. They also perceived that my plan was not enough to align with their agenda. However, their responses still made me happy because they gave attention and were so humble and helpful.

Better responses I got from professors at the Michigan State University and Penn State University. They welcomed and encouraged me to join by applying the application. They also introduced other professors who had relevant expertise. Besides, they guided me on what I had to do.

Responses from professors at the University of Florida, Indiana University Bloomington, and Florida State University were more promising. They offered an interview session via Zoom and sent the meeting. I accepted it without a doubt at all. They were surprisingly so friendly and gave a lot of important information about their universities.

The best response came from a professor at the University of Minnesota. She offered me to join her research group in 2025. She gave a letter of recommendation that later I used to apply for the Pathway Scholarship. She also promised that she would give the recommendation to the committee of admission at her university. Further, she introduced her students who are Indonesian, and asked them to guide me on how to study in the US and how to live in Minnesota.

What had I done to get good responses like those? I will share my experiences here.

Preparation

The most important step to getting good responses from professors is good and mature preparation. This includes writing a good resume, essay, and research plan. They perceived us by our writing. Good writing will make a good perception of us from their perspectives. That is the most important thing to get their attention.

The selling points of my writing are my experiences and expertise. In my resume, I clearly and straightforwardly presented prominent activities and achievements using strong keywords. One of the most important was my experience involved with a research team on my campus, which collaborated with one of the universities in the US, the North Carolina University at Greensboro. Besides, I also added important information to support my resume, such as my role as principal in research grants.

The essay is another important thing to get the attention. I communicated how my experiences, expertise, and goals were interrelated in a three-page essay. I also related them to Indonesia's challenges, which is what I want to contribute to solving them. Finally, I stated that my goals will be perfectly reached by studying in the US, especially in certain universities.

I had recognized and decided on the research interests that I would develop for a lifetime, which was written in a brief research proposal. That also included the novelty of my research plan. I used recent and good literature from reputational journals to support the project. 

Execution

We will get good responses from appropriate professors. The next step that we have to do is to check some universities that have relevant programs to our plan and research interests. I had checked so many professors, their expertise, and their projects until I got who were relevant. This was not an easy way. But I thought that I had to do it.

Once I got the appropriate professors, I then contacted them via e-mail. I did this many times. The main key was patience. I never gave up until I got the responses that I wanted. The other key was to use effective and straightforward language. The title of the email had to be brief and informative. When they read it, they directly knew what the content was.

Some emails had long conversations. Meanwhile, others just had one or two replies. It depended on the discussed topics. These gave me experience in how to write good language when communicating with people who English is their native language.

Interestingly, I also had a bad experience when I wrongly wrote the university where the professors work. I sent an essay to two professors at the University of Washington, but I wrote "the University of Texas" in the essay. I previously sent an email to professors at UT and forgot to change it when sending it to the UW professors. They did not reply to my email. I believe that because of the wrongness of my writing.

In summary, what I share here is not guaranteed that we will get LoA. However, I believe that communication with professors is one of the important ways to open the door of universities in the US so that we can get LoA in the future. Let us pray may God give us His guidance to us all. Aamiin.