================== EMAIL QUERY, from November 2021 ============================================

Hi Shashank,

Greetings. 

I, XYZ, am a Research Engineer-AI at  ABC. I am looking to apply for the Ph.D. program in EECS/HST at MIT for fall 2022.

I am writing to you to inquire about the Information on ALFA Lab. I have been conducting research on Deep Learning and its application: <link to google scholar>.

I have read several publications from your lab and I think the research being carried out at the lab interests me enough to pursue a Ph.D. I wanted to learn more about the lab and its members. Specifically, how often do members meet with the advisor and with one another? What are the expectations of the advisor in terms of results and publications? What should be the profile of a potential candidate willing to join the lab?

Please find attached is my CV for your reference and I would be happy to answer any further questions you may have.

================== MY RESPONSE ============================================

thanks for writing in, XYZ.

```
I have read several publications from your lab and I think the research being carried out at the lab interests me enough to pursue a Ph.D. I wanted to learn more about the lab and its members. Specifically, how often do members meet with the advisor and with one another? What are the expectations of the advisor in terms of results and publications? What should be the profile of a potential candidate willing to join the lab?
```

i would strongly recommend you to watch this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IprN9fPV2LI
in the video, prof. shriram provides a perspective on how to think about applying to competitive phd programs. it answers your question on what the expected profile of a potential candidate is.

unfortunately, at this stage, i think you're asking the wrong questions here. you should worry about the logistics of advisors, their expectations, and how their interaction with their students is only when you have something meaningful to talk about the work they are onto. 
it doesn't suffice to claim "i've read several papers from your group, and i think the research being done is nice that i want to pursue a phd". what papers did you read? what did you understand about it? how do you reckon you will concretely contribute to any of these research threads? your email does not provide any information on this.

instead, what will help to have a meaningful conversation (always) is if you attempt to read a paper sincerely, understand it well, ponder about it, and have anything thoughtful to say about the the work, or if you can articulate something the work does not address or something that you think can be done in a different way. 
better still, go ahead and fork any codebase related to the paper/project, play around with it, and see if you can spot anything amiss, or if you have can come up with any modest minor improvements/tweaks. go ahead and actually implement it, and write an email sharing those results + submitting a PR to the codebase! 
Such actions would concretely demonstrate the basic skills you possess in the area you propose to be interested in--something the person you're reaching out to would want to (and love to) see.

all this, of course, is a LOT of work. but i can assure you it would be well worth it--you will learn immeasurably.

all the best.

shashank