IIT Mumbai (mini rant)

[Doc Smith]

I've got another one!

Once to twice per week I get an application for an internship from an undergraduate student at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. I used to reply to them politely, then caustically, then I wrote to the bloody university asking them to pass something round the students telling them to stop, now I just delete them.

Put simply...

(1) IIT in Mumbai is a much more highly rated university than mine so why on earth would they want to come here?

(2) We don't offer internships anyway

(3) Why would a student want to do an engineering internship in another university, surely they should be looking at engineering companies.

(4) The blighters never bother to actually read my personal webpage and tailor what they write to my actual research work anyway.


Asking around colleagues at my own and other UK universities it appears to be ONLY IIT Mumbai with this bad habit, but pretty much all UK engineering departments are getting these constant and irritating Emails from Bombay.


Can anybody shed any light on this? Are these Emails going to other countries? Subject areas?

Doc.S

[quark]

[mebison]

[nonlincoder]

[Tango01]

Doc Smith, I have exactly the same experience in the US. The only difference in my case is regarding your first point although I still don't know why they will want to come to the other side of the world for such a short time and a limited learning scope as an internship (which is not offered anyway). For the rest, I am exactly at the same position (well, I pass into the no answer stage without writing to the authorities there).

However, I probably receive more messages from Iran although these messages are from students wishing to pursue grad. studies. Still many of these messages are not tailored at all and sometimes they are even in the wrong area. I also have trouble answering all these messages.

[Tango01]

nonlincoder, with respect to the "it doesn't hurt to ask" I should say that if you put together the number of messages received with points #2 and #4 from Doc Smith, these messages are borderline with spam. In fact, I fill that asking in these conditions is quite disrespectful. At the least, sending these messages is not good email etiquette. And if it is not disrespectful it does hurt because it shows that you don't care to look into information that will indicate that you really care about where you are going and how much you are going to work while in that place.

With respect to the immigration thing, if they planning to emigrate through a few months internship that means that they are planning to stay illegally afterwards and no one will take the chance to take a student under such assumptions.

[nonlincoder]

[Tango01]

nonlincoder, the problem is that many of the messages are not generic but tailored to another area. Also, if the admission information does not include internships then the appropriate thing is to ask the admissions office before sending a generic message to a professor.

The "does not hurt" explanation contradicts the immigration plan (1st internship and then grad school then a job) because such messages may hurt grad school prospectus (because of the generic and " I don't care what I do" image, and the short duration of internships). Although this doesn't mean that a young undergrad will realize about this issue when sending the message (which are in general written with a very respectful language).

[orbifold]

Doc Smith,

I get a few, fairly regularly, and my area is Physics. They ask for a summer internship (generally about 3 months) and they always begin "Dear Respected Sir". They include an attachment that purports to be their CV, but I have never opened one because I fear a virus. I delete them without replying.

[christina_bme]

I've gotten one of these, and I was an undergrad at the time. I think the person just figured out some way to send them to all the email addresses in my school's domain.

It's almost like they're the Nigerian scam emails of the academic world. They seem to follow a very set pattern. It makes me a little sad thinking about these poor sods that are so desperate to come to the U.S. that they'll grasp at any straw.

[Seagull]

I've gotten a couple in my short career in academia. The subject area would invariably be anything but mine. (Computation linguistics? Heck, I barely even passed that class!) The emails would also show no understanding of (or willingness to understand) the system over here. Actually, most of the time I wouldn't even know what they're asking of me (to sponsor their studies? to be their advisor? to give them more information about the program?). If I was feeling nice I'd send back a short email asking them to clarify (which they never did); if I wasn't, I'd just delete.

[Veronika]

[FloatBoat]

There were a few grad students from IIT Mumbai at my university. They appeared to be savvy enough to know where to apply, whom to approach and what to write and so on. (Some maintained advice blogs on these things!)

I can't think that so many students will be clueless (with generic emails). This spamming appears almost as an effort to sabotage IIT Mumbai reputation.

[Noodles Romanov]

We get a whole bunch of IIT students interning every year, as UWA is trying to get them over here so they can then later become full-fee paying students for the Masters in Engineering course. They are generally good kids, but they really do struggle when you want them to make a decision or apply some creative thinking to a problem or project, and they also need constant attention, which can be very frustrating.

[LabTroglodyte]