Asking for advice on other graduate schools while asking to be in their program
Hello all.
I want to start applying to graduate school in the next few months, but finding ones that are right for me has been proving to be remarkably difficult and frustrating. I want to get a Ph. D studying behavior of cephalopods, and after months of searching online, I have only found three professors who are in that field in the United States, and two of them work at schools that don't offer Ph. Ds. I e-mailed those two professors a fortnight ago, asking them if they knew of schools with Ph. D programs that I could apply to, but have not heard back from either of them.
I want to e-mail the third professor and ask if he has any room in his lab for one more Ph. D student in Fall '10. I really and honestly would LOVE to work for this man. He does everything that I want to do and more. But the idea of applying to only one graduate school makes me very nervous. The university he works at is fairly prestigious, and while my GPA is good and I have a little research experience, my GRE scores are rather...sad.
Some of my friends think I should ask him both things in my e-mail: "Can I please be your graduate student?" and "Do you know of any other graduate schools where I can pursue a Ph. D in the field of cephalopod behavior?" These friends think that if I frame it like, "I would really love to be your graduate student, but let's be realistic, I might not be able to get into your university, so do you have any recommendations for back up schools?" the professor will understand and lend me a hand.
Other friends think that if putting both those things in one e-mail might give him the impression that I'm really not that interested in being his graduate student. I understand where they're coming from, because I don't know how I would feel if someone said, "I really want to work with you OMG!" and then, two sentences later: "Um...so, yeah, do you know of any other places where I can get a Ph. D?"
My intentions are definitely the former situation. I would give my left arm to work in this man's lab. But, again, I feel it's way too risky to put all my eggs in one basket like that. On the other hand, he is my ONLY lead to finding other graduate schools in my field of interest.
So what is a lover of cephalopods to do? Should I write him an e-mail asking to be his graduate student and for advice on finding other schools, or should I leave the latter part out?
I want to start applying to graduate school in the next few months, but finding ones that are right for me has been proving to be remarkably difficult and frustrating. I want to get a Ph. D studying behavior of cephalopods, and after months of searching online, I have only found three professors who are in that field in the United States, and two of them work at schools that don't offer Ph. Ds. I e-mailed those two professors a fortnight ago, asking them if they knew of schools with Ph. D programs that I could apply to, but have not heard back from either of them.
I want to e-mail the third professor and ask if he has any room in his lab for one more Ph. D student in Fall '10. I really and honestly would LOVE to work for this man. He does everything that I want to do and more. But the idea of applying to only one graduate school makes me very nervous. The university he works at is fairly prestigious, and while my GPA is good and I have a little research experience, my GRE scores are rather...sad.
Some of my friends think I should ask him both things in my e-mail: "Can I please be your graduate student?" and "Do you know of any other graduate schools where I can pursue a Ph. D in the field of cephalopod behavior?" These friends think that if I frame it like, "I would really love to be your graduate student, but let's be realistic, I might not be able to get into your university, so do you have any recommendations for back up schools?" the professor will understand and lend me a hand.
Other friends think that if putting both those things in one e-mail might give him the impression that I'm really not that interested in being his graduate student. I understand where they're coming from, because I don't know how I would feel if someone said, "I really want to work with you OMG!" and then, two sentences later: "Um...so, yeah, do you know of any other places where I can get a Ph. D?"
My intentions are definitely the former situation. I would give my left arm to work in this man's lab. But, again, I feel it's way too risky to put all my eggs in one basket like that. On the other hand, he is my ONLY lead to finding other graduate schools in my field of interest.
So what is a lover of cephalopods to do? Should I write him an e-mail asking to be his graduate student and for advice on finding other schools, or should I leave the latter part out?