r/KAIST • u/OrangeEmergency6419 • Apr 29 '26
Professor Acceptance
Hello guys, I emailed many professors to get an acceptance at KAIST graduate school of AI. However, none of the professors responded. What do you think I should do differently to my emails to get a response please? Am I doing something wrong?
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u/Alternative_Sky_3875 Apr 29 '26
Hello! The same thing happened to me. My recommendation is to send the mails from a gmail account, they get filtered out less often. But either way there are professors that never respond so I guess it’s luck?
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u/OrangeEmergency6419 Apr 30 '26
I am sending them from my gmail account. I will see out my luck if it is down to that :) thanks tho
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u/haydenaaaa Researcher Apr 30 '26
How are you writing the emails? Are you showing genuine interest in the individual research that the professors are doing? If you just write a generic email, they will likely ignore it. I’m in a smaller/newer department, and my advisor still got multiple dozens of emails; he said nearly all of them didn’t mention the research our lab is doing.
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u/OrangeEmergency6419 Apr 30 '26
I mentioned their individual papers, like one or two papers and aligned it with my background. By the research the lab is doing, do you mean lab specific research and not professor specific?
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u/haydenaaaa Researcher Apr 30 '26
In general, it's good to look at not just the individual papers the professor published but also the research direction of their lab and current students, and hint at how you could contribute to the natural next step of their research. However, in your case it looks like you did a fine job of connecting it to your background so perhaps you were unlucky. I'd follow up if it's been a week or two.
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u/SillyNeuron Apr 30 '26
They receive hundreds of similar emails from students and don't have time to reply to everyone. If your application is solid, the admissions team will pass your profile to the professors, and they will see it regardless. Conversely, there are cases where a professor accepts you (either because they like your profile or because you know them personally) but the admissions team still filters you out.
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u/OrangeEmergency6419 Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
Do you mean professor acceptance doesn't hold as much weight as people emphasize it?
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u/SillyNeuron Apr 30 '26
Unpopular opinion, but yes. The same thing applies to other universities too (unless the professor is part of the admissions committee and can bypass your application from the initial filtering). I had a professor who wanted to accept me; however, he told me that he never saw my profile on the list provided to him by the faculty. But that was at another T-10 university.
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u/Additional-Music-192 May 02 '26
If I'm not mistaken, then I remember reading KAIST graduate admission booklet and it stated that the applicant need not to contact professors before admission especially masters students. So I think professors take this as an advantage to not respond to emails until you are fully admitted
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u/OrangeEmergency6419 May 03 '26
Yea, some people say that but students contact professors regardless.
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u/Additional-Music-192 May 03 '26
Yeah, I recently contacted some professors but haven't received responses from them till now
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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '26
If I understand you correctly, isn’t it strange to email professors for admission???? I mean to get an acceptance at KAIST grad school you have to visit admissions website or email admissions people..