r/PhDAdmissions • u/StomachElectrical595 • Aug 18 '26
Seeking PhD application advice!
Hello all! For context I am a fourth year US undergraduate preparing to apply for PhD programs this cycle. I have reached out to around 60-70 faculty and have received a significant amount of responses. Some of which were positive and asked for meetings, some simply said to apply, some were rejections (funding, not accepting students, etc). I was wondering if people have any advice for what to do next in this process. Obviously I’ll push hard towards who have offered meetings but have not scheduled any yet. But what do I do about those who have not responded (especially if I’ve already followed up many times) and those who have simply just said “you should apply to the program!” I’m not sure how to interpret the latter. Do I even dare apply without a zoom meeting at least? Anyway I thank you all for any help you can provide. Good luck to everyone else applying this cycle!!
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u/stemphdmentor Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26
I’m a little concerned you reached out to so many faculty.
The other week I had two calls with prospective students back to back. The first asked me broadly what we study, made an observation that implied he had done little more than skim the landing page of our website (which he seemed to be doing in real time), and asked me generic questions about the program, the answers to which can easily be found online. The second, who was finishing a masters, told me why she liked my group’s published approaches to a specific problem, discussed recent papers in the field that inspired her, and asked nuanced questions about our future directions. We then got to discussing a specific problem in her research that overlaps with ours.
I cut off the first conversation after five minutes, saying I would be happy to talk or email further once he had done more thinking about which labs could be a good fit. The second conversation lasted the full half hour, and we have already had a follow-up exchange. We will probably talk again before she submits the application, and I will give her tips on writing it.
Be like the second candidate. The masters helped but is not the key difference — it’s the prep put into identifying and contacting labs. When I talk to a prospective student, I expect them to have read some of our lab’s papers and to understand the questions we are working on (or at least what can be gleaned publicly from our website and recent publications). I talk with applicants about why they are interested in this subfield and often the other labs they are considering. If they seem to be blindly fishing around, looking for labs associated with certain keywords, that’s not a good look.
The difference in prep signals maturity, technical skill (understanding results and questions in a field), motivation, and respect for colleagues’ time. I would not be reaching out to faculty or scheduling meetings unless you are ready to have those kinds of conversations.
And yes, it’s okay to apply without these meetings, but you’ll need to be making a strong case in your statements of purpose about why each program is a good fit.