by Anat Belasen, herpetologist, evolutionary ecologist, Smith Conservation Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Cornell University,
U-M EEB Ph.D. alumnus 2019I’ve gotten a lot of questions recently about the best way to reach out to potential advisors, so I thought it might be helpful to publicly post the advice I’ve been giving out here.
Building rapport with a potential advisor is key, at least in the field of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. What does rapport mean? Basically you want to have a few conversation going with someone, which allows you to get a sense of each other and how compatible your research interests are. If a faculty member is interested in you as a student, this greatly increases your chances of being accepted to their department’s grad program. It is pretty rare to come across a program where you don’t need to have a faculty member willing to vouch for you during the application review process.
First thing’s first: how do you find a potential advisor? I recommend starting your search several months before application/fellowship deadlines (so for most grad school deadlines, ideally in the summer or early fall). There are lots of ways to go about this, including contacting authors of papers you find interesting; networking at conferences and on social media (both with potential advisors, and with graduate students/postdocs/faculty who may have recommendations for good advisors for you); and attending seminar series that include invited external faculty. I highly recommend signing up to meet with invited seminar speakers – this is a great way to network, and I have several friends who have found PhD or postdoc advisors this way!