First off — I’m guilty too — not very — but still, guilty enough.

What am I talk­ing about? The appli­ca­tions we are all send­ing these days to get that dream for­eign intern. Have a look here: http://www.phdcomics.com/proceedings/viewtopic.php?t=7671&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 .

A few key high­lights from the 8 page long conversation:

Once to twice per week I get an appli­ca­tion for an intern­ship from an under­grad­u­ate stu­dent at the Indian Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy in Mum­bai. I used to reply to them politely, then caus­ti­cally, then I wrote to the bloody uni­ver­sity ask­ing them to pass some­thing round the stu­dents telling them to stop, now I just delete them.

Put sim­ply…

(1) IIT in Mum­bai is a much more highly rated uni­ver­sity than mine so why on earth would they want to come here?

(2) We don’t offer intern­ships anyway

(3) Why would a stu­dent want to do an engi­neer­ing intern­ship in another uni­ver­sity, surely they should be look­ing at engi­neer­ing companies.

(4) The blighters never bother to actu­ally read my per­sonal web­page and tai­lor what they write to my actual research work anyway.

I get a few, fairly reg­u­larly, and my area is Physics. They ask for a sum­mer intern­ship (gen­er­ally about 3 months) and they always begin “Dear Respected Sir”. They include an attach­ment that pur­ports to be their CV, but I have never opened one because I fear a virus. I delete them with­out replying.

Nice read­ing? Let’s move on  to advice to IIT Guwa­hati from an alumnus:

Dear cur­rent ______ students,

In past few weeks I was struck by a string of emails that moti­vated me to write back to you. If you are some­one who is apply­ing for internships/ research positions/ MS in var­i­ous schools or com­pa­nies (in India or abroad) , then hang on and lis­ten to some impor­tant stuff that I have to say. I think, this will really help you in being more suc­ces­ful in your search for what­ever you are look­ing for, and will also help in main­tain­ing rep­u­ta­tion of the school that you are grad­u­at­ing from:

First some unar­guable facts:

1) All of us have a stake in main­tain­ing rep­u­ta­tion of the Depart­ment of _________.If due to any rea­son, rep­u­ta­tion of our school/program goes down, it means less oppor­tu­ni­ties for all of us (alum­nis and cur­rent stu­dents combined).

2) When we send out “mails” the response rate is only 10–20%.
Each one of us have mas­tered the “Art” (you know what I mean). All of us come to IIT, learn from our seniors about how they got that cool intern­ship in Europe or that cov­eted GA/TA/RA posi­tion in a US univ. Obe­di­ent and smart peo­ple we are, we for­mu­late our own mails, “cus­tomized and tai­lor­made for our sit­u­a­tions”, and the com­pe­ti­tion then is who sends out the most sucks in a night. Cor­rect? The news is that every prof I know per­son­ally, knows about this process. Because guess what, this is the same prof who received a bar­rage of such emails every pre­vi­ous year. And over time, they too have got­ten smarter, and a lot of them now ignore such emails. Ever won­dered, why only 10–20% peo­ple reply to your “mails”? This is the rea­son why.

3) Should we stop send­ing these mails out? Short answer is Yes. Well then how do I get those cool intern­ships and GA/TA/RA posi­tions? Start send­ing out real and gen­uine emails.

As the say­ing goes: “Prac­tise what you Preach (and vice versa)”. I too am guilty of the same. Maybe because no one told me the cor­rect way. We were the sec­ond batch of the pro­gram, and there was just no pre­cedance before us. No alumni ever told us that when ordi­nary peo­ple receive a stan­dard IIT “Suck” they are left speech­less, aston­ished and dumb­founded (Okay, maybe not all three together, but one at a time). But hav­ing grown wiser over all these years I feel that its my duty to tell the cur­rent stu­dents that the stan­dard method of send­ing “sucks” is so 1990’s. We are now in 2008. The rats (read profs) have learnt to skip our mouse­traps (read sucks). We need a bet­ter designed mouse­trap (do they still teach such stuff in DO* Wink.

So lets do a crit­i­cal analy­sis of some sen­tences from stan­dard sucks that I received (I won’t tell who sent that to me. Ever. And it is not even my remotest inten­tion to embar­rass any­one. So don’t get dis­heart­ened if I used your email. You can still count me as a friend.)
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Dear Sir,

I am a Pre-final Year under­grad­u­ate stu­dent (3rd year) pur­su­ing Bach­e­lor of ****** in ****** Depart­ment at the Indian Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy (IIT), Guwa­hati — one of the pre­mier insti­tutes of tech­nol­ogy in India and among the most pres­ti­gious under­grad­u­ate schools in the world.
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I have a fer­vid desire to do my sum­mer intern­ship under your able guid­ance dur­ing the period May-July,2008.
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I would like to take this oppor­tu­nity to express my sin­cere inter­est in pur­su­ing my sum­mer intern­ship dur­ing the period May — July 2008, under your esteemed guid­ance. It would be a reward­ing expe­ri­ence for me to expand my knowl­edge bound­ary under a per­son of your stature.
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Sir, I am writ­ing this mail in order to explore the pos­si­bil­ity of doing a sum­mer project/internship in your com­pany dur­ing May-July 2008. I am inclined to do a sum­mer intern­ship in the field of “Human Com­puter Inter­ac­tion, Usabil­ity Engi­neer­ing, Inter­face Design” to acquire the skills and knowl­edge nec­es­sary for a future career as a pro­fes­sional. I am a highly moti­vated and hard-working stu­dent and am will­ing to take on any avail­able project that would be rel­e­vant to my area of study.
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I have been a hard work­ing stu­dent right from my school­ing days and I assure you the best effort from my side.I have an inher­ent curios­ity which dri­ves me to the fathom of the sub­ject and has thereby helped me to develop a strong con­cep­tual foun­da­tion.
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I would be extremely for­tu­nate to get an oppor­tu­nity to work in a dis­tin­guished com­pany as your’s and gain prac­ti­cal knowl­edge in the field of design which will help me shap­ing my future.
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Please give some time to eval­u­ate my chances of get­ting an oppor­tu­nity to do a project under your com­pany as this would really play a sig­nif­i­cant role for shap­ing my future.

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Dude and Dudettes, I’m embar­rassed. I am not God. And I def­i­nitely don’t have a “stature” of Abhra­ham Lin­coln (if that’s what you meant). I am sure you are a hard work­ing per­son, but so is every­one else. And I absolutely do not care about your “fer­vid desires”. And most of all, I don’t have a “dis­tin­guished com­pany” nor do I have any role what­so­ever in defin­ing “your future”. You future entirely depends on you and you alone. When you send out an email, that is what defines your future. No-one I know in indus­try will give a call back to some­one who sent such an email. Now when I think about my own his­tory, maybe that’s why I myself could never get an intern­ship in Europe. You need to learn from your senior’s experiences.

A pro­fes­sor from my grad school told me last year (and this is a fact too btw). He said “I think I am fed up with stu­dents from your under­grad col­lege. They seem to have these illu­sions that by send­ing out such emails they will sud­denly get a wind­fall of assist­ant­ship. It just don’t hap­pen that way. And what is it with every­one send­ing sim­i­lar sound­ing emails? Do they have essay classes in India where they are taught to write in a spe­cific way?”

Friends, this is killing the rep­u­ta­tion of our school and reduc­ing the chances of your future suc­cess. You and you alone can get this back on track. The sea­son of send­ing out “sucks” is com­ing rapidly. This time (just for a change), write a sim­ple, con­cise, short email.
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Believe it or not, small emails will firstly ensure that your email is read. Sec­ondly, It will leave the reader with the feel­ing that he received an email from an actual human being (and not a robot). Thirdly, it will leave a door open to ping back with min­i­mum effort, if some­one did not respond back. Address peo­ple by their name, not “Sir”.

Think in this way. It is fair for you to think of your emails as some­thing that is very impor­tant to you. Because your career is at stake. So you tend to fill up the email with details about your projects, past intern­ships, profs with whom you have worked for. But for a sec­ond stop and think from the per­spec­tive of the reader. They don’t care about any of the stuff you will write (unless of course you won a Nobel Prize). Your email is just another one in their busy inbox. Stand out by writ­ing short email, and easy to read crisp resumes and port­fo­lio web­sites. And as always, ask your alumni or seniors if you have any ques­tions. Don’t address your pro­fes­sor as Sir. We have not yet got­ten that “Order of the British Empire”.

Hope some of these things will make sense to you.

Good luck with your search.

Just going through the full thread would be best. Have a look. See our (alright — it’s focussed more on IIT B, but they can replace B by D any­day) excel­lent reputation.

And just stop and think before click­ing send. I know I will.

P.S. Also have a look here for another perspective.