I get a lot of letters of this type. Let me tell you what NOT to do. The first contact should not be a spam letter -- that is, a letter that you could easily have sent to 1000 faculty members worldwide, and probably did. Why should I spend more time answering your letter or reading your resume/CV than you spent writing the letter?
Often the letter is not even minimally customized. It is addressed to "Dear Professor" and does not mention the project name or the university, even though you think my work is wonderful and desperately want to work with me. The letter gives no indication that the writer has spent even a few minutes looking at the online materials related to my work. And then these hard-working people, so passionate about my work, go on to say that they want to work with me on "algorithms, data mining, software engineering, and computer vision" -- not areas that I currently work in.
Often I throw these notes in the trash immediately, or respond with a canned message pointing to a web page with info about how to get into a CS graduate program at CMU and about the specific issues of joining my group. (In case you're interested, see Page on cmu.edu.)
But once you send me that spam letter, there's no point in then going online and finding out what I do. You're already a loser.
So if you think that you really want to work with me as a graduate student, first take some time to find out what kind of research I really do. Then, if you have no experience or preparation in this area, get some. Read and think about my papers (and the essays on my blog), and some papers in related areas. Think about what you might be able to add to this, and what it will take to get up to speed. Do your homework. Then write me a brief letter, making specific reference to all of that.
Then maybe we can talk, and maybe something will come of it.
-- Scott Fahlman
以下是排名第二高的答案：
Keep it short and sweet.
Attach a CV, transcript, and a paper you've done. Say that you're planning to submit an application. Have one additional sentence explaining why you're a good fit that is laser targeted on that faculty member. This sentence shows that you're not spamming people and you thought carefully about why you're a good fit for this faculty.
The important thing is the application that you'll soon submit. The e-mail is to make sure that the professor looks at that application.作者: pielang 时间: 2014-10-26 19:50:49