Am I taking students?

I receive many (many) unsolicited emails about the possibility of working with me at grad school. Some are clearly bulk emails sent no doubt to a large number of professors. Some are customized to include phrases like “I was really fascinated by you paper [most recent paper] and I want to learn more”. (I get a surprising number of emails also from predatory publishers eager for me to write a book about my paper “Correction to: Modularity lifting beyond the Taylor-Wiles method.”) Some are much more personalized, relevant, and interesting. But it seemed worthwhile to write a short blog post which I can quickly refer someone to which may answer some of their questions. So here we go.

1. It is worth reminding the reader that, in the US, you are accepted to a graduate program and not to work with a specific advisor. At Chicago, students choose advisors at the end of their first year.
2. Yes, I definitely plan to take on more students in the future, and even in the short term future. However, I do plan to be somewhat selective; I would say that the more a student wants to work directly on the central topics inside the Langlands program the more background and independence the student must have.
3. I have no involvement with graduate admissions, and I don’t plan to serve on that committee in the near future. Moreover, I believe that we probably have something like 500 people who apply for graduate school, so there’s not really any reason to send me your CV and I’m most likely not going to read it.
4. I am totally happy to receive such emails, and some are more relevant than others. I sent a few emails of that sort myself when I applied to graduate school as well. To those emails, my response is: yes, please apply to Chicago, we have a great program in number theory here!
5. At the same time, I simply don’t have the time to write personalized responses to all the emails I receive along these lines. So please do not be upset if you don’t receive a personalized response and just get a link to this blogpost.
6. Because I get so many such emails, the previous default action is to save the email and not respond. That was usually the end of the matter (although I did feel a little guilty, thus this post.) More recently, however, some people do not appear willing take “no response” as an answer, and I now frequently get prospective students writing more and more belligerent emails demanding a response. This is probably not necessary for most of you, but please do not send multiple emails to me demanding a response. Emailing me four or six times is probably the optimal way to ensure that I *won’t* take you on as a student.