The academia has its own etiquette and if you don’t know it, you run the risk to make stupid mistakes. The following lines are therefore meant for outsiders in order to help them avoiding such formal blunders.
From time to time I receive an email from a student from outside Europe (usually South Asia, but once from the US) who would like to gain a PhD in Europe and often ask whether I could supervise them at one of the Universities I am connected to. Since the pattern has some basic elements which always repeat themselves, I think it is useful to address some of these general points, hoping to help such prospective students.
1. These students regularly start by telling me how broad their interests are. They write that they work on, say, “Sāṅkhya, but also Nyāyavaiśeṣika and Buddhism”. I am sure that they do it in order to please me, but the result is the opposite. I cannot speak for colleagues all around the world, but if you think you want to apply at a R1 or R1-comparable program, you just cannot boast an expertise you *cannot* have. If you are an MA student and you claim to know about several philosophical schools, this just can’t be true.
2. Just be honest and tell what you really can and are interested in. Say what you spend your nights reading with. Be specific, tell what you have concretely read. Not “Nyāya”, but “I read the Nyāyabhāṣya, first and second book until sūtra XY” (see also No. 4).
3. Most prospective students also explain how they have spiritual goals, like “refuting the Buddhist objections to XYZ and show that XYZ was right”. As much as I can sympathise with some of these goals, they are out of place in an academic milieu. You are welcome to dedicate your life to these goals, but if you want to contribute to the academic study of something, you should be ready to uncertainty and open to encounter stronger arguments from sides you would have not expected. Please separate your life as a believer from your life as an academic. This also means separating books of devotional character you might have read and found helpful in your personal journey from secondary literature of academic character. The line seems to you too thin to draw? Ask for help.
4. In most emails, it is not explained whether the person only works with secondary literature or also or primarily with sources. Please tell me what you really can do and be specific (say how many years you studied Sanskrit, Pali or Tibetan, which kind of texts you can read and the like).
5. In many cases, it emerges clearly after the first contacts that the person is not primarily interested in studying at University X, but rather at being sponsored by it. Please state clearly why you want to study at university X and whether you would be willing to pursue a PhD also without a scholarship. If you really wanted to study just at Harvard but have not been admitted, think hard because applying somewhere else without any specific motivation.
6. Last, good luck with your studies!
Now, colleagues from Europe and North America, do you share my views? What would you add or change?
I fully agree with everything you have mentioned. However, I would like to add another point: prospective students, on whatever level of their studies, must first be informed about the specific strengths and interests of the professor to whom they write.
For instance, I am not a political scientist, nor a sociologist, nor an economist. Any student with such interests who writes to me is wasting his / her time. (Not much of my time any more. It has happened so often that as soon as I see such a foolish and basically disrespectful email – can these people not first find out who and what I am? –, I delete it, without reading it completely, and without answering.)
Yes, good point, thanks for raising it. I also frequently receive emails which have apparently just been sent to *anyone*. In one case, the same email was sent to me and some of my colleagues in the same institute.