What is behind the "Indian Undergrad Research Experience"-spam?

I graduated from a premier Indian university more than a decade ago and have sent out such emails. Let me try to put this practice in context.

Like many universities around the world, Indian universities have a semester system and a three to four month summer break in-between. Many Indian universities (but not the IITs) have a compulsory summer internship that must be completed in the summer before the final year. These internships can be done either in industry or academia. Therefore, it is common for Indian students to apply for internships. Until the late 1990s, most students used to apply for such internships within India.

The situation changed in the late 1990s because a couple of European universities (EPFL for sure, but I think that there were others as well) started a summer internship program for Indian students (almost exclusively from the IITs). The primary reason was to attract Indian students for graduate studies; at that time most Indian students went to English speaking countries. I participated in such a program in the early 2000s.

These programs did not result in any mass emails. The department of the Indian university used to send a list of student CVs, and the department at the European school would select from that list.

However, once students realized that European universities accept students for internships, they started applying en mass. And most, if not all, of them got offers, typically from universities in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Spain, and Singapore; but also occasionally from the US and UK. (At least, this was the situation at my time). Initially, only IIT students were doing this; slowly everyone else also started applying.

At our time, some of us applied because we wanted to experience the research environment in Europe, others applied because they wanted a paid vacation. Some were meticulous in their search and wrote personalized letters; others simply sent out a form letter to everyone. My understanding is that most students (at least from IITs) still get such internships, so the practice continues.

Note that the universities which started this practice to attract Indian students were successful. They saw an increase in the number of students from IITs who applied for graduate studies. I have friends who went to study in a non-anglophone European country because someone had gone to the same university for an internship and had had a positive experience.

I don't know if more European universities have started this practice or not; but I know that recently Canadian universities (rather a Canadian funding agency) started a university internship program for international students from India, China, and Brazil.

I believe these are genuine requests for internships. They almost all appear to be mass e-mails. Even the personalized ones usually involve just a few "fill in the blank" additions, and it's clear that applicants sometimes share templates because I've received nearly identical e-mails from different applicants.

As far as I can tell, it's a vicious cycle. It's difficult to judge these applications, and most of them are wildly ill-matched or inappropriate, so recipients usually don't even reply. (I've found that replying is viewed by some applicants as a strong form of encouragement, even if I just say something like "Sorry, I never have any interns and I don't work in area X in any case." I feel bad about it, but this is a powerful motivation not to reply.) The lack of replies pushes desperate students to send out huge numbers of e-mails, and this drives the response rate even lower. The net effect is that everyone ends up unhappy with the status quo. For example, see the comments here, which feature discussion from both faculty and internship applicants.

If these are from real students, why do they think this could potentially work?

It seems to have degenerated into a lottery, in which a few students succeed in getting an attractive internship and that motivates many others to try.

Why India?

One partial explanation is that there are enormous numbers of English-speaking students in India who would be willing to consider studying abroad and would like to get an international experience as undergraduates. I've also heard that the IITs encourage students to do internships, but I don't know the details.

Some of the comments to this blog post by Jeffrey Shallit written in January 2010 appear to be from students from India.

Comment 1:

Not really. Most of the email soliciting these internships come from students who are looking for a free vacation in a foreign land, to make a bit of money and to get laid. The trend was started a few years ago, when some actually talented individuals were invited to universities abroad. Since then, these IITians seem to think that they are entitled to free lunches. My advice to you would be to install a spam filter that identifies these types of mail. If not, you can write a mail to the director of the institute or the dean of UG studies at "[email protected]" requesting them to forward a circular banning students from spamming international academicians. However keep in mind that some of the students are actually very talented, so to weed out the hacks, you can post some instructions that applicants must follow (many professors in major US universities have already done so). I hope these emails do not create a bad impression of IIT grads in your mind. I should hope so, considering I am one myself :)

Comment 2:

this is an Indian student of the college in discussion. We Indians are basically opportunists who have little to do with research when we say 'we study in premier institutes of India'

Mass mailing is a fad amongst iit students, most of whom look for a paid vacation in your project. But iitians provide economic labor and some of them work above expectations(some...mind you). Next time, try negotiating with the guys, and i am pretty sure you would save by outsourcing to the brown :D regards

Comment 3:

I too am a student in the mentioned institute, and like the guy who sent this mail, I have been applying to various professors in my field of interest.

Of course, the sad truth is that most of us write a template mail and send it to a group of 100 odd professors. These are generally the ones who want to have a "free lunch".

There are, though, certain very talented applicants who actually read your papers and are interested in working with you.

It is very sad that these students are screwed because of the spammers, but such is the reality.

Comment 4:

Intern Mail Spamming has always been a nettling issue for the Professors of foreign universities.

It is agreed that most students mail for the sake of getting an internship rather than having a keen and genuine interest towards the work. Yet, its a perpetuating fact that the Indian Institutes of Technolgy produce the best academicians.

Thus, its a request to all the Professors o kindly keep their mind casual in this regard as they can be assured of really talented students whose mails are on the way.

There are more comments, but they seem similar to these.