In late summer and early fall, I experience an uptick in emails from prospective students who are interested in doing graduate work with me. Getting emails at this time of the year is neither unique to me as a professor, nor to this particular year. However, there are trends in the last two years that are quite troubling. Nearly all the emails that I am getting from our part of the world (mostly from Pakistan, but occasional ones from other countries in South Asia) have uncanny similarities. The emails start with the prospective student introducing themselves and then have a specific paragraph about my work and what part of my work 'inspires' them. The sentence structure of these emails is almost identical. The worst part is that all of these students are 'inspired' (their words not mine) by the results of the exact same paper that came out last year!

I try my best to respond to every email inquiry about graduate school – even if my response is short and points the students to........

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