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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.

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.