[ngkabra]

Thanks. I've updated the intro of the post to make this clearer.

The PhD applications problem is a different issue. We're churning out a million engineers every year, and a good fraction of them are convinced that getting into a Masters/PhD program in the US is the gateway to riches and a better life. A few of these students are smart enough to know where to apply and how to apply, but most of them are clueless enough to actually spam any faculty email addresses they can find from any US university. And yes, they're mass emails, in the sense that they send out these mails to 10s of people without bothering to customize them.

The important thing to remember is that India is a vast and varied country. We have the worst students, but we also have the best students - so don't completely ignore all emails from all Indian sounding names; one of them might just be from the next superstar at your school :-)

[h0cked]

Well, I do agree that students can have different quality, and we shouldn't discriminate Indian students. But the problem is that enough Indian students have made bad reputation for all Indian students here (U.S), and to avoid future loss (time and effort of the faculties), we just start to reject any Indian students (at least in my own circle).

[ngkabra]

I know that this is a problem, and I don't blame you.

However, one of the admissions committee members of a top-10 US university told me how they deal with this problem.

That they keep track of good universities in India, and what GPA is considered good in India. Occasionally, they take a chance with a student with an interesting resume from an unknown University, and continue selecting from there if that student does well. Repeat this process, and over time they end up with a good list of sources of good students from India; and they ignore applications from all other Indians.

[Daniel_Newby]

Have you tried putting a test in your CV web page? For example, "I welcome inquiries from prospective students. I get a lot of advertising email, so include the phrase 'brown M&Ms' in the subject line so I will know you are a real person." That should weed out a lot of the email blast applicants.