How to email a professor when you have no connections

Most research positions are never posted. A student writes to a professor, the professor says yes, and the position exists. Students with a parent in science know this. Everyone else can learn it in five minutes.

Find the right people first

Search NIH RePORTER for your university and a topic you care about. Each result is a funded project with a named lead researcher. Funded labs can take students. Pick five.

Read one paper

Go to the lab's website and open a recent paper. Read the abstract and look at the figures. You do not need to follow all of it. You need one specific thing you found interesting and can name. Our guide to reading a paper will help.

Write four sentences

1. Who you are: name, year, school, major.
2. What you read, and the one thing in it that caught your attention.
3. What you are asking for: a chance to work in the lab, and how many hours a week you can give.
4. When you can meet.

Here is one to adapt.

Dear Professor Rivera, I am a second-year biology major at State. I read your lab's 2025 paper on sleep and memory in mice, and I was surprised that the effect held in older animals. I would like to work in your lab this fall and can give ten hours a week. I am free any afternoon next week if you have fifteen minutes. Thank you, Sam Lee

Attach a one-page resume. Put your ask in the subject line: "Undergraduate interested in research, fall term."

If nobody replies

Wait a week and send one short follow-up. Then write to the next name on your list. Write to graduate students and postdocs in the lab too, since they often supervise undergraduates and answer faster. Silence usually means a full inbox.

Ask about pay

When a professor says yes, ask whether the position is paid. If it is not, ask whether the lab can nominate you for a campus research fund, and apply to us for what is left.