Application Letter (also known as cover letter) -

You apply for a Fully funded PhD or a Postdoc position because you think it is best for you. The university administration that screens the application needs to know your motivation for applying for their positions. That is why it is very important to prepare a comprehensive and eye-catching application (cover letter) when you send your application. In many cases, the main text of the email that you send to the professor acts as a cover letter.

What is a cover letter?

A cover letter is a formal letter that you send to an employer or professor when applying for an Academic job or a PhD Position. It usually includes your resume and any other information that an employer would need to know about you in order to decide if they want to interview you. It is important that your cover letter makes it clear why you are interested in the position, and how your skills and experience will be useful.

You should know that a high-ranked University Professor generally receives between 50 to 200 emails per day (depending on seniority and fame). So, they don’t have time to read all your emails (maybe they’re only able to devote a few seconds to your email).

You should prepare your email so it’s good enough to convince him or her to continue reading your email and even open the attached CV. We have summarized some hints here in order to give you the best chance of success. First, we should avoid making mistakes, otherwise, your email will land in the spam folder of your professor.

Never do:

Never send the same email to many professors at a time! We have seen that many applicants send emails starting with the phrase “Respected Professor”! That is a fatal mistake meaning that you send this email to many recipients (professors).
Never write statements such as “I am interested in Physics, Chemistry, Biology” or some similar generic subjects. The recipient of the email (professor) has very particular expertise on some specific subject (e.g. Low-temperature STM or Leidenfrost Chemistry etc.) and is interested to see if you have some similar background.
Never write a long email as a starting point. For PhD or Postdoc applications, never discuss your high school activities in the cover letter (contact email).

There are some particular points that you should consider when contacting a professor to inquire about a position in his or her group.

To do:

Address the name of the professor to show him that you are sending this email exclusively to him. This can be done as “Dear Professor XX“.
Introduce yourself by mentioning which qualification you have. Do not list all you have in your CV but write only the top achievements that you think match to the research activities of the host professor. For instance: “I am XXX, a graduate student from Gent University, who has been working on atomic force microscopy (AFM) in the last 3 years and have published 2 articles on AFM in Journal of X and Y…”.
Then, explain why you are writing to him/her by stating the major activities of the host professor. The best action would be if you write a sentence about the particular subject that the host professor (and yourself) is interested in and have some articles on that subject. For instance, you can write: “I have read your recent article on AFM published in Journal of X wherein the correlation of morphology of Graphene and the deposition condition was discussed.”.
Finish your short email by expressing how your expertise matches his/her research activities. For instance, you can write: “My MSc project on microscopic analysis of Graphene shows that the morphology depends not only on the fabrication method but the environment temperature. So, I would like to explore this effect under AFM in your team as a world-leading group of Graphene characterisation in the frame of a PhD project.“

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What is a cover letter?

Never do:

To do:

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