I spent way too long trying to cold email professors for research and kept getting ignored. After talking to a bunch of people who had the same problem, I'm building a tool to fix this and want to know if it would actually be useful.
Here's basically how it works:
You enter your school + department and it pulls up professors from the directory automatically
It asks you 3 quick questions about the professor's research (forces you to actually know something about their work)
You paste in a few samples of your own writing so the email sounds like YOU, not a robot
It generates a draft, then shows you a "professor perspective" — basically what a professor would think reading your email, flagging anything vague or off
If you get a reply or not, you log it. Over time the tool learns what actually works for different departments and schools
The main goal here isn't really to help you send MORE emails (though efficiency is a huge part of it), but it's to send BETTER ones that could actually get you replies.
Would you use this? What would make you trust it or not? Genuinely want brutal feedback before I build the whole thing.