Want to go for an off-campus undergraduate thesis at world class universities from BITS?

"Serendipity is not just a coincidence, but the sequel of judicious execution of a well framed blueprint"

 

Once you make up your mind for a thesis, a lot of questions pop up. Where to find profs relevant to your field? How to approach them? What should you write in your mails to get an immediate attention of the prof? 

Well, if your brain resonates with some of these questions and you want to plan out things to get started, here is your guide.

Hello Everyone!

I am Ruchik Mishra, a graduate from BITS Pilani, Hyderabad campus. I have done my B.E. (Hons.) in Manufacturing Engineering. I hope you have already ready my previous post. If not, here is the link.

This is a follow up of the the previous post in response to the questions I received from the readers. So, I will discuss the following topics in detail.

Contents of this post:

• Different ways to find Professors for your thesis to increase your chances.
  
• How to write a good email so that you have a high chance of getting a reply.
• How to make your CV and what should it contain. 
• A small advise to all the undergraduate students.
  

 I am writing this post assuming that you want to pursue an off-campus thesis at another university in India or abroad. The contents cover a lot of ground and deal with a lot of things that are not explicitly mentioned. So, here we go!

This is just to give you an idea of what my mails used to look like on a normal day when I was looking for thesis opportunities. And this series went for pages in my sent mails. The number as I had counted once was approximately 500. But, that's a personal story. Many people have had success within the first 50 mails they have sent. So, you need not get intimidated by the number. Just hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

How to find professors from your field:

 There are a number of ways you can find profs relevant to your field:

From your prof's personal contacts

This is one of the most effective ways to get a thesis. If you have worked with a professor on some projects before, or done his/her course or at least know him/her, you can ask them to suggest you any contacts they might have. These personal contacts help you in a number of ways. It will increase your chances since, a prof is personally vouching for you and will also open up a lot of funding opportunities and there is a pretty high chance that your thesis will be fully funded.

Searching universities from QS world rankings or CS rankings

Now, this is comparatively tough as compared to the previous one. You will have to look for universities in your domain. You can filter out results specific to your branch, and you will get a list of all the universities. Here is a link to QS world rankings. I have selected the category of Engineering and Technology, you can choose accordingly. Start from last to first. By last I do not mean the very last one. For example, if you are aiming for top 100 universities of the world, start from the 100th university. Find out profs who work in your domain and send them a mail. 

The reason I asked you to start from the last is because you can iterate your mail a number of times by the time you reach the top. More iterations will lead to lesser mistakes in your mails and will give you a lot more confidence in terms editing the contents of the email. 

Here is a link to the CS rankings as well.

From professors who replied you and said 'NO'

There is a really good way to deal with your rejections. In case you receive a negative reply, you can follow these two ways that can help you turn your rejection into a success. These rejections can be broadly categorized into: 

The prof says he does not have funding: In this case, if you are willing to go for an unfunded thesis you can tell him/her that you are can arrange your own funding and ask him/her if they are still willing to accept. Otherwise, you can humbly request the prof to let you know if he/she knows someone from his/her department who might have vacancies or available source of funding. This really helps. In my case, a prof suggested me another university which he knew were into my field of research.  

The prof says your profile is not good enough: In this case, you can humbly reply him/her to give you a small piece of work that he/she is into. You can pursue some work under him/her remotely and can ask them to set up an interview where you can explain yourself well. These are just ways to assure the prof that you do have the required skills to do the job. I have tried this too and it works. It is all about how well you can express yourself and convince them that you actually are a good candidate. 

But in any of the above cases, do not argue with the prof or pester them because that does not form a good image of you or BITS and they may probably blacklist the mails from BITS in the future. So, don't do that.

Google Scholar

I will explain this with an example. Suppose you visit someone's google scholar profile, you will see a section where you can find their interests as links in blue as shown in the picture:

 

If you click on of these links, say robotics, you will get all the people registered on google scholar who have this tag. Here is a picture of what appears after I click on word 'robotics'.

 

 

There will be a long list of people. You can look for the profs this way too. Do not initially go for profs who have very high citations and feel under confident because they generally don't reply. So, start with Assistant profs who have low citations now but are emerging fast. This helps you in primarily two ways- First an assistant prof is generally new and will have a lot more enthusiasm to work and will have more time to mentor you. Secondly, most of the Assistant profs are open to new ideas which may not sometimes be the case with profs who have spent a considerable amount of time in academia. The old ones already have a lot of publications under their belt, so they would prefer sticking to their particular line of thoughts. Although, this is not always true and can differ from person to person.

National or International Conferences

This option may not be applicable in the current scenario as almost all the conferences are being conducted virtually. Still, it is an important way to connect to profs worldwide. If you go to present your paper in a conference, you basically have a bunch of opportunities roaming unarmed with spam filters or any sort of mail checks. This is where you can try your luck. Meet a number of profs and ask them about their lab.  Read about the prof from the list of speakers mentioned in your conference booklet or listen to their presentations, give them a compliment regarding their work and show your interest towards the topic. I know of people who have benefited a lot from it. A healthy and informative discussion is never forgotten. 

For robotics specifically

Subscribe to the robotics worldwide mailing list. It is free and is immensely useful. You get a lot of advertisements regarding vacancies at different universities. So that keeps you updated on a weekly basis.

How to write emails to professors 

This is a simple step. What's difficult is the number of times you have to do it and overcoming your fear to send your first mail. Before I start with the format of the mail, I would like to mention a few things:

• Send mails using your BITS ID. This ensures that you are a student from BITS.
• Send mails during the Prof's office hours, preferable around 9 am to 10 am according to their time zone. This is because, profs generally receive around 50-100 mails on a day. If the prof checks his/her mail in the morning, there is a high chance, it will be read.
• Do not send mails on their holidays/weekends. There will be a lot of mails above yours, so you might not get a reply. 

Now, lets talk about the structure of the mail.

What to put in the subject 

It is advisable to put in words that are catchy and sound professional. Do not put cheesy lines. Does not help. Here are some of the options you can go with. I have also put in their degree of impact which is based on personal experience.

• "Opportunities in your Research group" (weak)
• "Seeking thesis opportunity" (weak)
  
• "Seeking thesis opportunity in XYZ (name of the field you are interested in)"
  (strong)
• "Seeking thesis opportunity (XYZ Lab)" (moderate/strong)
• "Seeking thesis opportunity (Mention the name of one of their papers that you have really found interesting)" (moderate/strong)
• Some professors specifically mention what to write in the subject to make sure that you have read their instructions page. (strong)  

This is just to give you an essence of what can be written. It is not mandatory that you follow these. But these are some of the options you can consider. Also, it depends on the person who is reading your mail. I had used the first one for almost all my mails while I was looking for thesis opportunity and it worked. But after that, I have used all the above except the first one, it still works. But a better approach is to follow the stronger ones for best possible results. 

  

Body of the email

Make sure your mail is not very long that you need to scroll it to read it completely. It should be within one page. Here's what your format can be (worked out well for me):

Greetings:

Start with: Dear Dr./Prof. XYZ. Mention Dr. for assistant profs and Prof for the rest unless otherwise mentioned in the prof's page. Do not just write Dear/ Respected Sir/Madam. This sounds generic and may not help at times. Atleast address them properly.

Paragraph 1:

Mention your current status as a student and your year of study. For third year students, use the term, 'pre-final' year or 'junior year'. Mention the purpose of your correspondence and the time-line of your thesis. 

Try to start your thesis from June itself, this gives almost a six-month period for your internship which is favorable since profs prefer students who ask for a longer duration of research. 

Paragraph 2:

Mention a bit about the prof's research area/lab or the best thing is to write about his/her recent papers and tell them what you found to be interesting and how it relates to your work or research interests. You can mention some elements of their paper and relate it to any similar project that you have done where the prof's work can be applied to. This will give you a prospective theme of work that you can propose for your thesis.   

Some professors specifically mention to read their papers and say that your chances might increase, if you can possibly find out a correction or can suggest a good extension to them.  

Paragraph 3:

Talk about your recent research work/projects/papers published and describe it a little. Mention the keywords that describe your project the best in a professional manner. Mention the prof you are working with. If you have published a paper, then the project related to it should be mentioned in this paragraph along with the name of the conference/journal. 

Paragraph 4:

Write about the second most prominent thing from your CV. Mention the details again with some technical terms that are the keywords of the project. If you have another published paper, mention it here along with the project and the name of the conference/journal.

Paragraph 5   

Conclude by thanking the prof for reading this mail and take this opportunity to invite him/her for an interview. This helps in a lot of cases.

Signature:

Instead of writing Thanking You and Yours Sincerely in an old-fashioned way, you can mention your designation and signature in a cooler way. Here is a signature that I always use.

The section mentioned as signature in the image is what I am talking about. Looks descent, right?
   

Do not attach your resume:

If you send your resume as an attachment, your mail may land up in spam, which is not what you want. You upload your resume on google drive and mention the link to your resume/CV at the end of the mail. This looks better too and is a much safer option.

 How to make your CV:

I generally prefer Latex. You can choose whatever you want depending on your comfort level. There is no such correct or wrong way as to how the contents of your CV should be arranged. But, you would of course want to put in the important things first, right? Here is a picture of an old draft of my CV.

 Advice

Do not mess with your grades. It becomes really difficult to bridge the gap if you have bad grades. You will need work a lot more to compensate for it. Also, make sure your grades in subjects like Linear Algebra, Probability and Statistics, Calculus are good. Sometimes, professors do consider grades in mathematics to be an important parameter (not always the case, but it is good to be on the safer side). 

For students in their sophomore year, start working with a professor who has got good research history and also who has good number of contacts. This can help you in the future as I had mentioned earlier and which you do realize after reading this post.

In my future posts, I will talk about Research Assistantships/Internships after undergraduate studies that a lot of people opt for before applying for a Masters/PhD. 

Comment anything that you would like to ask me.

Till then, All the Best and Good Luck!

Acknowledgement:

I would like to thank Dr. Pallavi Saxena for helping me to write this post and investing her valuable time.