Many students want to give a impetus to their applications for MS or PhD in the US by working with a professor at a good research lab - for example in India there are the IITs and IISc and in places like China there is the Tsinghua University and in the US - there are so many good schools. Many people also apply for internships at EPFL, Switzerland and INRIA, France and so on. Here are a few tips when trying to approach professors at such places. In general, these tips hold true for emailing university professors in general.

1. Try to show why you are interested in the work going on in a particular lab

2. Try to do a lot of background survey on what kinda of work happens in that lab

3. Try to find matches between what kind of projects you have done and the kind of projects going in the lab currently

4. See the students of the professor in question and see what they are upto - they should have web pages available for this

5. Try to send them a link to your resume rather than a doc copy - it helps to save your email from getting blocked by spam filters

6. If you cant send a link (which is sad coz u can easily get a webpage from google pages) - then send in a pdf copy - not doc

7. Keep resume shorter rather than longer…profs dont usually have a lot of time

8. In the email you send - include 3-4 major points off of your resume - so that they know what you have in you and can go seek out more about
you in the resume…keep the email short…and sweet…