Harvard will be unique

There has always been a rumor in the market that Harvard University is most proud of rejecting 2,000 applicants with full SAT scores every year. No matter how good your homework is, I am indifferent! In fact, the admission requirements of elite schools are not elusive: European and American schools will interview students before admission, and a classic question is: Why should we admit you? What's so special about you? Features, potential or "uniqueness" are especially valued by top schools.

　　One such professor is São Joai Das, whose email trade-offs and judgments about students' potential are causing heated debate in study abroad circles to see how he interprets the standard of "uniqueness".

　　Every day, I get emails from international students asking me for admissions information, advice, and especially financial aid. For example, like these two sample application emails:

　　The applicant of the first email will never get admission information from me, this is an unexpected email - Dear Sir:

　　I am very interested in coming to the United States to pursue higher education. I am seeking admission and financial support from your school. I have a strong interest in artificial intelligence and computer architecture. I have programming experience in C++ and Jmva, languages. I am also very familiar with many software packages in the Windows environment, such as Microsoft Word, Excel, Spreadsheet, etc. I also have a networking certification from Norweiler. My GRE score is 2050 and my TOEFL score is 99. Please take a moment of your precious time to browse the resume in the email attachment.

　　Sincerely salute

　　So-and-so

　　[Professor's Comments] I only delete this kind of email because it's nonsense. This applicant seems to be too servile, I scan the full text, search for keywords like "precious" and "respectful", find one, and delete an email.

　　To be more specific, the applicant claimed to be interested in artificial intelligence and computer architecture, but these two are very unrelated fields, which led me to this idea: this applicant is trying to get as many scholarships as possible and other funding, so he will study as many majors as possible. In addition, the applicant has no statement to support or prove the claimed content. Then, he emphasized his skills in software, which gave me the feeling that the purpose of his study abroad was to get a software job in the United States, and the so-called pursuit of higher education was just a stepping stone for him to enter the US job market.

　　In the end, I felt that the letter was too mediocre to speak of.

　　Here's another email that will definitely interest me - dear Professor Das:

　　I am applying for a PhD at Kansas State University, I am very interested in your field of study, I am looking for the possibility of co-doing research work with you, and of course financial support.

　　One of my areas of interest is applying Tikhonov regularization methods to your computer neuroscience research, because I know that the data from neuroscience research is quite messy and sparse. In addition, I am also interested in applying evolutionary algorithms to your research on parameter estimation of genetic neural networks. Another interest of mine is multiprocessing. Have you considered putting multiple runs into systems that optimize algorithms? Considering that the research topics you list on your school website may be inseparable from a lot of computation, doing so may be a valuable strategic pursuit.

　　Last year, I presented a paper at the International Conference on Neural Networks and Image Processing, titled "Mixed layer descent training based on probabilistic repetition networks", which was later published by the conference as a peer-reviewed publication. I have uploaded this paper in PDF format in the attachment. If you have financial support and are interested in my application at the same time, please notify me as soon as possible.

　　So-and-so

　　[Professor's Comments] This is a straightforward email, the applicant is really interested in my field of expertise. This is an excellent applicant, and I will definitely do my best to dig this applicant into my major. Also, this person may already have a master's degree, you know, most applicants only have a bachelor's degree.