Reply to Tell High School Students to Stop Contacting Professors

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As business professor, I get tons of annoying emails from students wanting "research internships" or "mentorship".  Some are graduate students, some are undergrads, and some are in high school.  Some are in my county, some are in my state.  Some are in India or Bangladesh.

[i]"Dear Professor X, I am a junior at XYZ high school and am greatly impressed by your paper "" [published before this kid was born].  I would like to study under you."[/i]

One elementary school girl from across the country asked for a free sweatshirt.  Obviously her teacher told her to do this.  One private high school student bragged that he founded and ran a charitable investment fund.  The assets under management were less than one year of tuition.  Some college counselors must be telling them to get lines on their resumes.  One stranger sent his resume and asked for a letter of recommendation.

This is all an annoying waste of time.  I mostly teach graduate students, never lower-level undergrads.  High schools don't even offer courses in my subject.  Who is telling students to do this?[/quote]

And [b]you should not mostly be teaching grad students.[/b]  I would fire you if you did not have tenure.[/quote]

Is "no prof should be mostly teaching grad students" one of the next-gen prof-bashing memes?  Asking for a friend...  [/quote]

Yes. Some people here believe life begins and ends at undergrad.[/quote]

Before my oldest began his college apps this year, the only general advice I believed true about the process was: It doesn't matter where you do undergrad; it only matters where you do grad school.  This advice encapsulated my own experience (undistinguished but free undergrad, elite door-opening grad) and seemed pretty savvy from a financial angle: elite undergrad super-expensive, elite grad entirely free (with TAship or other source of widely available funding).

Then I discovered DCUM, where this advice is more or less flipped on its head: for the people who post here, the only thing that matters is where you go or went to undergrad.  What a weird fetish!
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