emailing professors

Today is the deadline one of the school. Next week there will be 2 other deadlines. I have already made the submissions for these schools so I'm quite cool. Anxiously waiting to hear something from the schools, but still quite cool.

I'm always amazed when I read of others' successes in contacting Profs in the schools that they are applying to. One chap posted "for some of the applications i made, i did write to professor in the department before applying - introducing myself and my interests and asking whether these match their research interests... i got some positive replies..." (italic added.)

Another emailed 13 Profs and received 10 replies. In another forum, someone posted "I am very surprised that a lot of people have not contacted the professors that they want to work with. All of the professors that I have talked with have said that they are shocked, every year, on the number of people who have applied to their department and have either not listed any potential faculty or have listed faculty but haven't contacted any of them."

For me, of the few contacts that I tried to made, I only received replies from ONE Prof. And over the last few months, our email exchange still has not touched on research fit or my chances, etc. So you can guess how I'm feeling after reading those postings above. Now with the deadlines passed or closing in, there isn't much that I can do beside waiting, hoping and praying.

4 more months to go...