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For those interested in what the text of the email was, from the study [1]: ----- Subject Line: Prospective Doctoral Student (On Campus Today/[Next Monday])

by nkrumm 12y ago

For those interested in what the text of the email was, from the study [1]: ----- Subject Line: Prospective Doctoral Student (On Campus Today/[Next Monday]) Dear Professor [Surname of Professor Inserted Here], I am writing you because I am a prospective doctoral student with considerable interest in your research. My plan is to apply to doctoral programs this coming fall, and I am eager to learn as much as I can about research opportunities in the meantime. I will be on campus today/[next Monday], and although I know it is short notice, I was wondering if you might have 10 minutes when you would be willing to meet with me to briefly talk about your work and any possible opportunities for me to get involved in your research. Any time that would be convenient for you would be fine with me, as meeting with you is my first priority during this campus visit. Thank you in advance for your consideration. Sincerely, [Student’s Full Name Inserted Here] [1] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2063742 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2063742

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
danieltillett 12y ago
This email lacks any personalisation and looks exactly like spam to me. I am wondering if the study should have been entitled "Generic emails containing minority names are classified as spam at higher frequencies."
- thaumasiotes 12y ago
  That problem is difficult to solve for a controlled experiment; as soon as you personalize the messages then two outreaches to two professors become incomparable to each other.
  - danieltillett 12y ago
    This is true, but as a former professor if I got an email from a possible candidate requesting to meet with me that did not show that they had at least bother to investigate my research area I would tend to ignore them. If you don't personalise your email mails then they really do look like spam. The way to solve this study would be to do a delayed crossover. I would send the same personalised email (just changing the name), but send them 3 months apart. No professor is going to notice the two emails were identical after this length of time.
  - emiliobumachar 12y ago
    I disagree. You could write personalized letters to each of thousands of professors, as long as each contained a slot for the student's name. If you then randomly assign the different student names to the letters, you still have a perfectly valid controlled experiment. No need to compare two outreaches to each other. Being said that, the study as it is is already very solid proof of discrimination. So what that the email looks spammy? If it looks just as spammy from each and every group, and not every group is equally rejected, that's textbook discrimination.
    - thaumasiotes 12y ago
      Those personalized letters won't be comparable unless they are so generic that they're still spam. After randomizing which name goes to which letter, you're stuck with an infinite number of dimensions of variation, where one dimension is the ethnicity of the name signed at the bottom of the letter, and the other infinity represent the "quality" of the personalized letters. You won't be able to conclude anything about the influence of the name.
      - emiliobumachar 12y ago
        I still disagree. If there are only two letters, than, sure, the relative quality of them will dwarf the influence of the name. But if there are thousands of letters, assigned randomly, the Law of Large Numbers does its magic. No name gets assigned significantly lower or significantly higher quality letters than the average. (something like that could happen, but the odds are small enough to be ignored). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers
- emiliobumachar 12y ago
  Very interesting hypothesis. If it's true, I'm not sure if it makes it better or worse. Are we unintentionally programming our computers to automatically filter out messages from minorities? Talk about dystopia...
- wfjackson 12y ago
  What kind of spam says 'I want to meet you in real life today/Monday' ? I would guess dating sites, but there's no URL whatsoever in the email and those professors have a lot of experience with a lot of real emails that follow the format.
  - danieltillett 12y ago
    >What kind of spam says 'I want to meet you in real life today/Monday'? Student spam :) Actually I used to get around a dozen of these emails a week from potential "students" wanting to study with me. What these people seem to be doing is sending the same email to every professor in the department (could be the whole university for all I know). They seem to be scraping the emails either from the department websites or getting them out of the corresponding author detail of my published papers. If I was not too busy I would send back a reply asking why they wanted to work with me. I have to say that I go very few coherent replies. Advice. If you actually want to study under a particular professor spend the time to actually learn about their research. Ask them intelligent questions that show that you have read their papers. If you show that you are bright and keen and have decided that this is the area you want to work in then the professor will be much, much more willing to meet with you.

by nkrumm 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

danieltillett 12y ago

This email lacks any personalisation and looks exactly like spam to me. I am wondering if the study should have been entitled "Generic emails containing minority names are classified as spam at higher frequencies."

thaumasiotes 12y ago
That problem is difficult to solve for a controlled experiment; as soon as you personalize the messages then two outreaches to two professors become incomparable to each other.
- danieltillett 12y ago
  This is true, but as a former professor if I got an email from a possible candidate requesting to meet with me that did not show that they had at least bother to investigate my research area I would tend to ignore them. If you don't personalise your email mails then they really do look like spam. The way to solve this study would be to do a delayed crossover. I would send the same personalised email (just changing the name), but send them 3 months apart. No professor is going to notice the two emails were identical after this length of time.
- emiliobumachar 12y ago
  I disagree. You could write personalized letters to each of thousands of professors, as long as each contained a slot for the student's name. If you then randomly assign the different student names to the letters, you still have a perfectly valid controlled experiment. No need to compare two outreaches to each other. Being said that, the study as it is is already very solid proof of discrimination. So what that the email looks spammy? If it looks just as spammy from each and every group, and not every group is equally rejected, that's textbook discrimination.
  - thaumasiotes 12y ago
    Those personalized letters won't be comparable unless they are so generic that they're still spam. After randomizing which name goes to which letter, you're stuck with an infinite number of dimensions of variation, where one dimension is the ethnicity of the name signed at the bottom of the letter, and the other infinity represent the "quality" of the personalized letters. You won't be able to conclude anything about the influence of the name.
    - emiliobumachar 12y ago
      I still disagree. If there are only two letters, than, sure, the relative quality of them will dwarf the influence of the name. But if there are thousands of letters, assigned randomly, the Law of Large Numbers does its magic. No name gets assigned significantly lower or significantly higher quality letters than the average. (something like that could happen, but the odds are small enough to be ignored). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers
emiliobumachar 12y ago
Very interesting hypothesis. If it's true, I'm not sure if it makes it better or worse. Are we unintentionally programming our computers to automatically filter out messages from minorities? Talk about dystopia...
wfjackson 12y ago
What kind of spam says 'I want to meet you in real life today/Monday' ? I would guess dating sites, but there's no URL whatsoever in the email and those professors have a lot of experience with a lot of real emails that follow the format.
- danieltillett 12y ago
  >What kind of spam says 'I want to meet you in real life today/Monday'? Student spam :) Actually I used to get around a dozen of these emails a week from potential "students" wanting to study with me. What these people seem to be doing is sending the same email to every professor in the department (could be the whole university for all I know). They seem to be scraping the emails either from the department websites or getting them out of the corresponding author detail of my published papers. If I was not too busy I would send back a reply asking why they wanted to work with me. I have to say that I go very few coherent replies. Advice. If you actually want to study under a particular professor spend the time to actually learn about their research. Ask them intelligent questions that show that you have read their papers. If you show that you are bright and keen and have decided that this is the area you want to work in then the professor will be much, much more willing to meet with you.