Tjyylli

What I currently do is save the following text on my computer, and simply paste it in an email response every time I receive this type of email.

I'm sorry to say that this email is too generic for me to consider you as a future PhD student working with me. Unfortunately, it doesn't demonstrate that you know what topics I work on. I'd recommend in the future sending only a few emails. Focus on max 10 or so potential supervisors that really fit your specific research interest. Explain what specifically drew you to them as a supervisor. Explain what you want to work on with them. You should have read one of their papers or at minimum read a description of their research from their webpage. The type of email you wrote will get very few responses because we receive several such emails. I hope this doesn't come off too harsh. I hope you might take this advice and improve next time if you send more emails in the future - because I really do want you to succeed.

Here is an example of what I sent to my prospective PhD advisor 10 years ago. I only emailed 6 professors, because I really wanted to
spend a lot of time tailoring my email to their interests and
convincing them I wanted to work on the things they worked on.

"My name is _______ and I am a senior majoring in _______ at _______ University. I am interested in working in your lab during graduate
studies at _______ because I want to do research in _______.

Your website especially stood out because you state that you encourage independent research and team work. Currently, I am
collaborating with six other students doing _________. We defined our
own research question, and although it was the toughest part of the
project it was the most rewarding. During this project, I first came
across your early work on _______ - and further reading some of your
newer papers ______ & ______, I really like the diversity of the
problems in your lab. It seems like a really exciting lab to be part
of.

Specifically, I am most interested in doing research in _______. I am in the beginning phase of drafting an NSF graduate research fellowship
application on the topic.

I was wondering if you will have any openings for new graduate students in your lab this coming year? Any comments or feedback would be greatly appreciated."

cheers,

-Dr X

Note I've redacted some info from my sample letter (replacing it with "____"s)to mask the identity of my advisor, (but I don't do that in my email to the student). It's important to note that the blanks include info that shows I knew about that professor's research and that I had worked on similar things.

The goal being to provide them useful advice that they might take and become more successful in the future. Often these students come from disadvantaged backgrounds or from developing countries and I think it is really important to try to help them and not just ignore their emails. Of course, as one becomes more well known, even this strategy might prove to be cumbersome.

Over this past graduate student application season, nearly all of the students I sent this email response to were gushing with gratitude for the advice.

If I am not especially interested in the student's profile, I simply delete the email. If no effort whatsoever was spent by the sender to address an email to me personally, I don't feel like I have a duty to respond to it.

If I am interested by the student's profile and they have just been clueless about how to get in touch with potential supervisors, you can answer generic advice as suggested in @WetlabStudent's answer, or you can write a one-line generic answer like "Thanks for reaching out. What would specifically interest you in working with me?" and give the student a chance to be more specific.

In our department, we forward those emails to the department administrator, who replies with a polite but generic e-mail encouraging prospective students to apply via our normal procedure. However, that’s a bit above and beyond, and I realize many departments don’t offer such a service to their faculty.

In lieu of that, if you are a Gmail user, I recommend the “canned responses” feature, which is even easier than the copy and paste approach IMO.

Life is about setting goals and priorities.

If your goal is to be a saint, then spend time helping these random unknown individuals to fulfil their ambitions. If not, just hit "delete".

Nobody can tell you whether to aspire to sainthood or to winning a Nobel Prize for your academic work (or something in between those extremes), but history suggests that trying achieve both simultaneously doesn't work.

It seems like the consensus here about replying to generic emails with canned emails. I have nothing to add to the existing answers, except a technical solution to make the process of copy-pasting the emails easier. Two software I can recommend for Windows users are PhraseExpress and AutoHotkey. The former has a GUI and can sync with your phone, the latter gives you more flexibility.

For AutoHotKey, use:

:*:cemail::

SendRaw,

(

text text text

)

return

So every time you type cemail (shorted for "canned email"), text text text will be auto-typed. If you need to customize the text, use InputBox.

Interesting question. I went through the application process a few years ago, and quite a few professors never responded, and to be honest I think that's perfectly okay, and have told many of my friends to expect no reply when applying. If you really want to, I'd keep it brief and say basically that you're looking for students with a clearer idea of their research topics and ones who know better what you are studying. and then tell them best of luck.

How to politely respond to generic emails

Don't. If the email is unsolicited, you're not obliged to answer.

I know that this goes against our inner moral compass, but think of it this way: sending email is quick and easy. Too quick and too easy. Those people most likely have put less effort into sending such email than the effort you have put into reading it! It's you who's at disadvantage here. Responding is nothing short of letting yourself to be robbed of even more time against your will. That's why your colleagues just delete them. Don't feel bad for ignoring bad mails.

In fact, feel bad for replying! If you reply to bad mails, you're only showing that their strategy is working and encourage them to keep sending more. You're helping by ignoring.

You want to be helpful. But they're not asking for your help, they're asking for a specific favor. What you're currently doing is unsolicited advice, as unsolicited as their spam. And like most unsolicited things it only makes everything worse. You'll be seen as condescending and patronizing. You're basically saying "be more like me and less yourself". Nobody wants to hear that. You're not helping anyone, you just make yourself feel better about being yourself.