A note for applicants who want to apply to MSU and want to contact me in my role as graduate director

· It is always beneficial if you find a faculty advocate for your application. Faculty advocates are not required but desired. To find a faculty advocate, identify the area that you want to work on. Contact the faculty in that area. For help in drafting the emails, please see below for my advice on the what I would like you to do if you are contacting me as a possible faculty advocate/advisor.

· Avoid emails that start `Dear Sir/Madam'. This just tells us that this is a mass marketed email. Take some efforts in drafting the email that shows you have done some research into my you want to get into MSU or with a specific research group.

· If you have contacted a faculty advocate, please include this information in Statement of Purpose.

· It would be useful if you include the keyword: MSUAPPLICATION in the title. I have a filter that will make sure that these emails do not go to spam.

· Please review http://www.cse.msu.edu/Students/Future_Grad/HowToApply.php for information.

o This also includes English requirements (for international students only)

A note for potential applicants who want to apply to be in research group

I am looking for several new students in Spring/Fall 2020. If you are interested in working in my research group, please read the note below.

Note for students not yet enrolled in MSU:

• For those applying to graduate program (MS/PhD)

1. Contact me beforehand to determine if your interests match the research conducted in our group. Use the keyword NEWSTUDENT in the subject. (Be sure to read item 7 before you contact me.)

2. When you apply, be sure to mention that you are interested in working with you in your statement of purpose.

3. After you apply, be sure to inform me approximately two weeks after you apply. This time, the application is generally viewable by me so I can give you any feedback necessary.

4. Also, contact me around March 1^st as this is the time when admission decisions are being made.

5. If I have replied to your earlier mail and encouraged you to apply but I do not respond to your subsequent follow-up, it is mostly due to the fact that the mail was lost in the large collection I get every day. Feel free to contact me again after a few days.

6. Some of the work involved in my research group focuses on program verification, distributed systems, cloud computing, security, and software engineering. If you have a background in this, be sure to mention it.

7. I receive several mails requesting for an RA position. Most of these mails appear to be mass marketed, i.e., it could have been written to 1000s of other people. This includes areas of interests such as Databases, Image processing and several others that I have never worked on. Such emails will be deleted forthwith. If you would like me to respond to your mails read about the projects I am involved in, past research papers, and identify what you would like to do towards your MS/PhD/Summer internship/….

• For those requesting summer internship positions

1. Generally, I cannot provide funds for such internship. Also, if you are an international student, I am not sure how visa issues will be handled. However, given these constraints, it may still be possible to pursue an internship, as sometimes are well-defined problems that I can provide/guide you.

Note for students enrolled in MSU:

If you would like to join the research group, please follow the same advice above. However, if you have general questions about what you might expect in graduate school, or you are trying to decide between going to graduate school or not, or if you have other general questions about graduate school, feel free to send me a mail to set up an appointment with me. I will be glad to discuss this with you.

Best,

Sandeep