margsala

In attempts to strengthen my grad school application, I got the idea of emailing people who do area in the field I am interested in and volunteer to help them out with research remotely. What does everyone think about this?

My reasoning behind this decision is that
- It would strengthen my grad school application
- It would confirm my interest in he field
- I still need to continue working, so I couldnt commit to showing up somewhere but I could work from home on weekends / nights
- I am pretty set on the area I want to do research in and there is no professor that does this research within a commutable distance from where I live (and moving is not an option right now)

I am tempted to email professors and volunteer, but I am scared this will come off in a wrong way and I will later hurt my chances when applying to grad school at these institutions in a year.

What are everyone's thoughts?

juillet

I don't think this is a good idea...I don't think any professors would go for that. It's hard enough to do this when you have established relationships with colleagues or graduate students, but an unknown?

You can do research in a related area that's not exactly what you want to do with a professor within commuting distance.