Required reading for students looking for feedback

Please follow the below instructions if you think I can give you helpful advice

This is the first time I’ve tried this, but I thought Nicole Ruiz had a good take here — going to try to use classical images for my posts for a little!

I love helping students. Every success I’ve had in my life can be directly attributed to helpful input I’ve gotten at some point while I was a student. I view it as a great honor to have people contact me looking for advice on what they should do.

In the past year I’ve had quite a lot of inbound requests for advice from college and graduate students on career things, which I’m very happy to provide. However, in 2025 alone over a dozen students have emailed me asking for my opinion on what they should do with their life (full disclosure, I won’t ever tell you what to do). I try to be really thoughtful with the feedback I provide and often these discussions can span many emails over months or years — allowing me to do a good job requires that you work with me a little to make it fruitful.

To help me meet the demand, I’m asking students who want to email me to answer the following questions in your intro message so we can expedite the process. Please address them in the following order — it helps me a great deal. Not everything below will apply to everyone, but answer the ones that are relevant to your situation.

I’ve included anonymized examples from emails I’ve gotten that I found useful for directing the conversation.

• What year / program are you in?

  • “I am a sophomore at MIT” or “I’m a fresh grad from WashU thinking about medical school”

  • If you’re not in a degree program, that’s fine too — “I studied CS in undergrad but have been building enterprise products for the past decade and want to go back to school for bio”

• What are you up to right now?

  • “I’m working in Feng Zhang’s lab as an RA”

• Is there something in particular you are hoping I can provide?

  • It’s not always clear to me what people are looking for. Someone can say “I’m thinking about applying to graduate school” which is directionally useful, but actually doesn’t say much about what you think I can help with. Instead, “I am trying to decide between applying MD vs MD/PhD programs and want to understand how you landed on just an MD program” led to a great discussion I could provide pointed feedback on.

  • Another common one is “I am struggling to pick the right lab as an undergrad at MIT” which I’m also happy to help with.

• Are you willing to relocate?

  • I’ve observed that students are trying to understand how they can maximize their chances of success in an application cycle. My general experience from my own life but also that of close friends is that this is a long game, it will take some years to craft a story compelling enough to be admitted to respectable programs of any kind. With that in mind, I want to understand if you’re willing to move, or if you would like to stay where you are now. Either is fine, but it changes what I’ll say!

• What is your timeline?

  • Rather straightforward, but sometimes people want to keep to the timelines they set in advance of talking. All good with me, just let me know. Example: “I want to wait for my wife to finish her MBA in May before we move anywhere.”

That’s it. Feel free to email me eryneym@gmail.com.