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I am currently a master's student outside the U.S., and I plan to contact professors in U.S. universities for PhD applications. I have a bunch of email addresses available, and I don't know which one is the most appropriate for communication.

My main objective is to make sure my email doesn't get lost in the spam folder, and it wouldn't hurt to have a first decent impression.

My options:

(1) surname@university.edu.xx: Email given from the current institution where I attend.

(2) surname@alumni.university.edu.xx: Alumni email from the university where I got my undergrad degree. (5 years ago)

(3) surname@university.edu: Email from a well known U.S. university where I spent a year as an exchange student (around 8 years ago).

(4) f.m.surname@gmail.com or firstname.surname@outlook.com: Private email addresses

My question is, do you think the possibility of getting a response depends on the email domain? What email domain should I use?

A friend of mine who ended up at a top-5 grad program suggested me to use (3), saying that it could increase my chances of getting a response. However I am cautious that it may look pretentious or delusional, considering I have been there such a long time ago.

Am I overthinking this?

• Personal email is OK, as long as it doesn't look too unserious (mickeymouse666@gmail.com is bad). Gmail looks more professional than other providers, but not by much.




• Avoid email addresses that will expire soon. Unfortunately, many university addresses are like that. An expired address means you won't get late followup answers (and trust me, there are emails threads in research that span decades).




• Avoid anything with alumni in it. Many people have a delete reflex when they see the word "alumnus", as it mostly appears in the context of panhandling by alumni orgs.




• There is nothing pretentious about .edu addresses.

I suggest you use your current email address, i.e. option 1 with name@university.edu.xx.

The reasoning is that this is the email address that reflects your position. Writing with another email address from a different university does not really tell the person who you are. Especially if you are listed on the homepage of your current institution.

The second best option is to use your private address, but as darij grinberg stated in his answer, it should look serious.

Finally, to answer your question: As long as you use either of the two options (current institutional address, "serious" private address) your mail domain will not matter. You are probably overthinking.

You are overthinking and your professor will probably not even read your address when your mail programm adds a real name to the from field, but there are two things you should consider:

Spam rating: When your e-mail ends up in the spam folder, you probably won't be noticed. GMail should not have a problem with this.

It should be a permanent address: This is the address, that the will be used forever.

It is rather common, that someone will start typing your name and use the first address that is suggested by the mail program, disregarding that you changed institutions and have a new primary mail address. So you probably should have a forward when you use an address that will change, or it really needs to bounce. When the e-mail is delivered to a mailbox that you do not read anymore, you will miss out on important mails, even when you told him the new address.

In addition, you may want to use an address that can guarantee to conform to data protection regulations. For your personal e-mail it is your personal risk, but when you start working for the professor and you exchange details about students, it may be a problem to use services like GMail. A university usually provides better data protection in their e-mail terms of service.

You may be overthinking it, but everyone who wishes to communicate by email needs to find a way of avoiding spam filters.

Having been in your position a few years ago, namely wishing to engage the attention of professors who would never had heard of me, my strategy was to use an obviously personal email address, a very clear but brief subject, and a very brief email message (in impeccably grammatical language) with a clearly stated question, such as "Would you be willing to consider me as a possible graduate student?".

Brevity is crucial, but for a counter-example consider Ramanujan's unsolicited letter to GH Hardy. Ramanujan stated theorems that were very exciting but not so exciting as to suggest that he was a crank. Unless you are offering material of that quality, I advise a short clear statement of what you want from an honest personal email address.