Hey there, I got past the initial screening on the 23rd and got my documents from the embassy on the 24th, I began contacting my top two choice universities, Tokyo Tech and Tohoku.
Both of them said that I should contact the professor directly, I have sent an E-Mail requesting the LoA yesterday, I also requested a reply to indicate that the E-Mail was delivered and not sent to spam but I have still no reply.
I am worried about this since one of the professors requires that I send him the CV / Research plan before everything else, and I am waiting on his reply to send the rest of the documents.
\- Are my worries baseless?
\- Is there a way I can ensure that the E-Mails are correctly received by the 27th of August (deadline for requesting LoAs?)
\- Am I able to contact more professors from the same department? I would prefer not to, as the professors I chose are the best for my research, but just to make sure nothing goes wrong.
2 comments
Asking a professor for confirmation that he got your email generally doesn’t work. He/she got your email, but may be too busy to respond at the moment. I know the timeline is short, there are a few other students in a similar situation this go around.
I would definitely refrain from contacting another faculty member. It’s standard procedure to contact one faculty member, wait two weeks, send a follow-up, and wait another two weeks before contacting another.
In your case, if they are aware of the deadline and you have given them all of your documents (CV and research plan) the best thing to do is to just be patient and hope they get back to you in time. In your case, I would actually contact more universities because ANY loa is better than none in this situation.
I had a similar situation and in last resort I added one of the PhD members from the Prof. laboratory on Facebook and explained my situation.
He had a talk with the professor about me who I guess simply forgot about my application and he approved my research plan a little later. Of course it may or may not work and may look pushy, but in my case it was successful and I became quite friend with the PhD student.