For high-school students writing to faculty
Find professors doing research you actually care about.
Search a reviewed faculty directory, read what each professor publishes, and send a request that says what you want and what you have already done.
- Computational neuroscienceReviewed profile · 3 listed publicationsMemoryfMRI
- Neural circuitsReviewed profile · 5 listed publicationsCircuitsOptogenetics
- Brain–computer interfacesReviewed profile · 2 listed publicationsBCISignal processing
What a request asks for
- Topic
- The area you want guidance on
- Background
- Coursework, skills, current work
- Goals
- What you want out of the reply
Most student outreach is deleted before the first line is finished.
Generic from the first line.
Soft flattery and a résumé dump read as one of a mass send, so the reply never comes.
Papers named, not read.
Citing a title without engaging with the method is worse than citing nothing at all.
A directory that was already stale.
Faculty change direction between papers. A department page last updated years ago will not show that.
Every faculty profile is reviewed by a person.
Professors apply with an institutional address, and an admin checks it before the profile appears in the directory. Accounts that cannot be matched stay out, and students can only message faculty inside it.
Why not just use a chatbot?
A general chatbot
Schollective
Will draft a citation, or an email address, that does not exist.
Every faculty profile is reviewed by an admin before it appears.
Produces a template, and the template reads like one.
A request form with three questions: what you want, what you have done, what you are after.
Leaves you stitching together search engines, department pages and a chatbot.
One directory, one thread per professor, and nothing invented in either.
How it works
Three steps, and the writing is still yours.
- 01
Search by subfield, not by school
Look up the topic — memory consolidation, computational linguistics — and see who lists it.
- 02
Read the profile, not the ranking
Each professor's page carries their own bio, the publications they list, and what kinds of students they take.
- 03
Send a request, not a template
Three fields: what you want guidance on, what you have already done, and what you are hoping to get back.
Send the email that shows you did the reading.
Free for students. No card.