Every year, I get a large number of emails from prospective graduate students asking about my research group. I greatly appreciate your interest and I hope I will get to work with as many of you as possible. However, please understand that emailing me (or other individual professors) does not impact your chances of being admitted. If you do have questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. If not, there will be plenty of time to discuss our program more as the admissions process unfolds. Some FAQs:
Q: Does your department offer fee waivers?
A: There is information about fee waivers here: https://www.astro.ucsc.edu/academics/graduates/new_prospective/index.html. Note that we don’t have as many of these available as we should, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. Whether or not you ask for a fee waiver is not considered (or even viewable) by the grad admissions committee.
Q: Are you taking a student next year?
A: Usually when students apply, I do not yet know whether I will be taking a student. However, please note that our department admits students to the department, not to work with an individual professor. Once you are admitted, you will have the opportunity to talk to all of the professors and find a match. My colleagues in exoplanet observations and instrumentation are excellent! Even if I don’t have a spot in my group, most likely one of them will.
Q: What projects do you have for new graduate students?
A: I’ve advised students in a wide range of topics, including exoplanet imaging, brown dwarfs, exomoons, instrumentation and astrobiology. I do a lot with JWST and am finishing up a new instrument, SCALES, which will be deployed at Keck Observatory. SCALES uses adaptive optics, coronagraphs and integral field spectroscopy to take spectra of directly imaged exoplanets.
Q: Do you think my application will get me in?
A: In fairness to all of the applicants, I don’t give advice on applications (either how to improve them or whether you will get in). In any case, there are a diversity of viewpoints on the admissions committee and my perspective might not reflect the aggregate. We get far more qualified applicants than we have spots available in the program so there is a bit of random chance as well.