The Cold Email Impasse: Finding the Words That Got a Top Professor to Reply
Why generic prompts produce replies a supervisor deletes, and how viva prep prompts and a cold email template give your question a shape worth answering.
AI Prompt: Cold email a professor about a research place
Short, specific, and easy to say yes to. Free and private: no account, nothing you paste leaves your device.
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The prompt
Write a cold email to a professor about a research position in {lab_area}. Use my background below, name one specific thing about their work that connects to mine, and ask for one concrete next step rather than a general opportunity. Keep it under {word_limit} words, no flattery about their prestige, and say what I would need from them. Then list what I should attach.
Their work:
{their_work}
My background:
{background}
Fill in {lab_area}, {word_limit}, {their_work}, {background} before you send it.
How to use it
Short, specific, and easy to say yes to.
Frequently asked questions
What is the AI Prompt Library for?
It is a set of over a hundred ready prompts, filed by the stage of the work rather than by kind: finding and mapping a topic, breaking down a concept you do not understand, planning the method and checking the numbers, drafting and tightening the writing, verifying citations, answering reviewer comments, preparing for a viva, learning the next skill, and writing to a supervisor or an employer.
Will my institution treat this as plagiarism?
These prompts ask a model to structure, critique, or check work you already have. They do not produce a finished essay and they are not secret. Most universities allow AI for planning and proofreading when you disclose it, and nearly all treat undisclosed generated text as misconduct, so check your own policy first.
Do I need an account or an API key?
No. The library is a plain list that ships with the page. You copy a prompt into whichever assistant you already use, so there is nothing to sign up for and nothing to configure here.
How do the braces in a prompt work?
Anything inside curly braces is a blank for you to fill in, such as your topic, field, or word count. Replace them before sending, otherwise the model will guess and the answer will be generic.
Is anything I type tracked or uploaded?
No. The search box and the copy buttons run entirely in your browser. The prompts are static text, so there is no server to send them to.