校内宝物.doc

2008-02-12 09:46() 2008-02-09 22:12eW“-email 2008-01-22 21:43200 2008-02-18 18:24 2007-12-29 22:401 2008-02-13 10:07 2008-02-12 09:461. 2. 3. 4. 5. * 6. 7. 8. 9. 2338XXXXX 10. () 2008-02-09 22:12JJJJQoQQQoK10KKgo-vern-mentKo2312345678910111213141520253035404550556070QWbeW“-email 2008-01-22 21:43?: Sanjoy Das, Assistant Professor,Kansas State UniversityPh.D. 1994, Louisiana State University.Evolutionary algorithms, neural networks,artificial intelligence, discrete optimization.International applicants seeking assistantship/admission: please do notsend me emails blindly without reading thisEvery day I receive emails from international candidates for information,for advice, and especially requesting financial assistance. Unfortunately, Idelete most of them without even reading them carefully. I get so manyirrelevant emails that cannot reply to each. Extremely rarely has onecaught my attention. Please do not send me emails without reading thisfirst. I am only interested in corresponding to candidates who areexceptional, and have a strong interest and experience in my immediatearea of specialization, and I highly prefer ones with a Masters degree.Here are two sample letters:A sample letter that will never get the candidate an assistantship with me:Unwanted emailRespected sir,I am very interested in going to the US for higher studies. I am seekingadmission and financial assistance in your esteemed University. I amvery interested in artificial intelligence and computer architecture. I haveprogramming experience in C+, C and . I am also familiar withseveral software packages in the Windows environment (MS Word, ExcelSpreadsheet etc.). I also have networking certification from NOVELL. MyGRE score is 2050, and I got 99 percentile in the TOEFL exam.I request you to spare a few moments from your precious time to gothrough my attached resume.Sir - if you are kind enough to offer me assistantship, I promise to workvery hard for you. I have a very good academic record since primaryschool. Alternately, can you tell me what are my chances of gettingassistantship from your department?Can you kindly inform me about the last dates for Summer term 2002before which I can apply?Thank you for your valuable time,Yours obedientlyABCMy comments: I simply delete these emails, which I consider garbage .The person seems to be too obsequious and flattering. In the emails thatI do read (occasionally), I do a first scan for keywords like precious,respected etc. deleting the email if I find one. Obviously the person isnot professional enough. The person is interested in artificial intelligenceand computer architecture - these are quite unrelated areas, making methink that he is trying to cover as many professors as possible to get aidfrom any possible source. Besides, he does not have anything in supportof his claim (about his interest in artificial intelligence). He emphasizes onhis software skills, making me think that his goal is to get a programmingjob in the US and higher studies is only to allow him access to the US jobmarket. His GRE scores are OK, but not exceptional. He asks me to tellhim what his chances of getting an assistantship are, elsewhere in thedepartment. I have absolutely no way of finding that out, and even if Iknew, I would not bother to reply back. He also asks me to give himinformation about summer deadlines. How am I supposed to know that?(I would typically expect that this information should be available fromthe University web site, or from the grad school, but my guess is as goodas yours.) Finally, this letter is too generic . He probably uses exactly thesame format for hundreds of email letters to various professorsthroughout the country, leaving no stone uncovered. I receive hundredsof email like this. Regretfully, I cannot answer everyone, and theseapplications do not interest me at all.Now, here is a letter that would DEFINITELY attract my attention:Excellent emailDear Prof. Das,I am applying to KSU (amongst other places) for a Ph.D., and I am veryinterested in your research areas. I would like to explore the possibility ofdoing my research with you, with financial support.One possible area that would interest me a lot is in applying Tikhonovregularization to your problem in computational neuroscience, since Iunderstand that neural data can be very noisy, and yet sparse.Alternately, I am also interested in applying evolutionary algorithms toyour genetic neural network parameter estimation. One of my otherinterests in in parallel processing. Are you considering parallelimplementations for any of your optimization/estimation algorithms?Considering that the projects that you list in your web site would probablybe very computationally intensive, that may be a worthwhile strategy topursue.I presented a paper entitled Hybrid Gradient Descent Based Training ofProbabilistic Recurrent Networks in the International Conference onNeural Networks and Image Processing, Bangalore, last year. It is areviewed publication. If have attached a copy of the article in pdf format.If you have available funds, and are interested in my application pleaselet me know soon.XYZMy comments: This is a straightforward letter from someone with agenuine interest in my area . He is an exceptional candidate. He hasevinced a keen desire to lear