How do I find a PhD supervisor who is actually recruiting?

We find the professors who are actually recruiting in your field, write your approach to each one, and prepare the exchange that follows, so you stop cold-emailing into silence.

Direct answer: Target academics with current funding and remaining capacity rather than whoever appears first in a search. MAAS EdTech identifies professors actively recruiting in your field, establishes whether the department decides by supervisor or by committee, and prepares your approach, which you approve before MAAS sends it from a campaign mailbox opened in your name.

What does this service cover?

PhD Application Strategy, Execution & Supervisor Outreach replaces mass cold-emailing with a systematic search. MAAS narrows your research direction, filters departments against requirements you actually meet, profiles professors currently supervising and funded, then drafts your approach to each of them and prepares the exchange that follows.

Most PhD applications fail before anyone reads them. The candidate picks a country, emails fifty professors, and hears nothing back. That experience is not just anecdote: Katherine Milkman and her co-authors audited more than 6,500 professors across 259 US institutions and 89 disciplines, and found that only 67% of first-contact emails from a prospective doctoral student got any reply, and just 59% of the professors who replied agreed to meet a student they knew almost nothing about, according to a study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology (Milkman, Akinola, & Chugh, 2015).

This is Group B · Advisory: MAAS commits to expert guidance and process quality. Admission and funding decisions belong to the admissions committee and the professor, and stay outside MAAS's control.

Who is supervisor matching for?

Supervisor matching suits master's graduates seeking a funded PhD place in Asia, Australia, the UK or Europe, particularly those whose research interest is still too broad to be a research direction, or who have already emailed professors and heard nothing.

• You hold a master's degree and want a funded PhD place in Asia, Australia, the UK or Europe
• You have a research interest but it is still too broad to be a research direction
• You have emailed professors already and received no reply
• You are a lecturer or industry professional returning to academia after a gap
• You are unsure which programmes your profile actually qualifies for

Does any of this sound like where you are?

• You are about to start a doctorate and already intend to publish internationally, so you want a supervisor whose work runs in that direction.
• You are writing a research proposal for an application abroad and do not know which service you actually need.
• You have a specific foreign institution in mind and cannot tell from its website whether you meet the entry conditions.
• You have emailed professors before and received nothing back, and you suspect the letters were the problem.
• You do not know which professors are still taking doctoral students or whether their funding can carry one.

This is not for you if you want MAAS to sit your interview or to author your proposal. You are the author and you are the candidate in the room.

What do you get with supervisor matching?

You get your research direction narrowed to a defensible question, a shortlist of departments screened against requirements you meet, a positioning table of professors who are currently supervising and funded, and personalised outreach written for each of them. That positioning step is what the Milkman, Akinola, and Chugh (2015) data says actually moves a reply: specificity, not volume.

• Research-direction narrowing: turning a broad topic into a defensible research question inside a recognised research tradition
• Profile positioning: what to lead with, and which gaps to close before you apply
• A filtered shortlist built from 20–30 universities and departments, screened against entry requirements, funding for international candidates, active research groups and live deadlines
• Professor profiling: a positioning table of 12–15 academics working in your sub-field who are currently supervising and funded
• Personalised outreach written for each professor, tied to your proposal
• A dedicated campaign mailbox in your name, run by MAAS during the search and handed to you at the end with its full correspondence history
• Drafting support for the exchange once a professor replies
• Developmental feedback on your research proposal, which you write

How it works

MAAS runs supervisor matching across 15 one-to-one sessions of 60 minutes, online, in three phases: profile and proposal upgrade in weeks 1 to 3, department and professor positioning in weeks 4 and 5, then the outreach campaign with interview coaching from week 6. Each phase closes on named deliverables before the next begins.

1. Weeks 1 to 3
   Step 01

   Narrow and position

   We fix your research sub-field and decide how your profile is presented.

2. Weeks 4 and 5Both run in the same two weeks
   Step 02

   Shortlist schools

   20 to 30 departments filtered on entry requirements you meet, funding, active research groups and deadlines.

   Step 03

   Profile professors

   We read the two or three most recent papers of each candidate, not just the bio page, to confirm fit, capacity and funding.

3. From week 6Both run together to the deadline
   Step 04

   Approach and negotiate

   MAAS drafts each approach letter and the replies that follow, you approve each one, and MAAS runs the sending and the follow-up from your campaign mailbox.

   Step 05

   Support the application

   Proposal feedback, document review and interview preparation through to submission.

What happens in each phase of the search?

Each phase runs to a fixed set of deliverables rather than open-ended hours, so you can see what has been produced before the next phase starts and before the next payment falls due.

Phase 1, profile and proposal upgrade. Your research proposal is audited for internal consistency between its model and its method, citations are verified against real DOIs, the methodology is reconstructed where the design cannot answer the question, a multi-year research schedule is built, and an industry CV is converted into an academic CV. This phase closes with a submission-ready proposal, an academic CV and statement of purpose, a short positioning report, an interview question framework, and drafting frameworks for your referees.

Phase 2, department and professor positioning. Between 20 and 30 universities are cross-checked against your profile requirement by requirement, and each candidate professor is assessed by reading their most recent work rather than their biography page, confirming both that they are still taking doctoral students and that their funding can carry one. Where an admissions page is unclear, MAAS writes to the department directly. This phase closes with a personalised university table, a positioning table of 12–15 professors with links to their work and their funding status, and a backward timeline that turns every deadline into weekly tasks.

Phase 3, outreach and application. Pitch letters are written individually against each professor's own research, approved by you, then sent by MAAS from your campaign mailbox in controlled batches of four to six a week rather than all at once, tracked, and followed up on a set cadence before a target is closed out, which mirrors what supervisors said they preferred in the same diary study: one considered approach, then a follow-up, not a flood (Henderson et al., 2025). This phase closes with a one-page proposal summary, twelve to fifteen pitch drafts, a progress report every Friday, and interview coaching in English.

How does MAAS decide which countries to target?

Admissions systems split into two kinds, and the split matters more than rankings: in supervisor-led systems a professor who wants you can largely secure your place, while in committee-led systems a panel decides on scores you may not have.

Japan, Korea, Taiwan, much of Australia, the UK and continental Europe run largely supervisor-led admissions, so a candidate whose strength is research fit and professional experience competes well there. Systems that recruit through a central committee tend to weight standardised test scores and prior publications more heavily, which is a harder route for an applicant who has neither yet.

This is why MAAS does not start from a country list. The shortlist comes out of your profile, and the countries fall out of it.

In the United States, admissions typically run through a faculty committee rather than one supervisor. Julie Posselt's 2016 ethnographic study of ten doctoral programmes at three research universities, published by Harvard University Press as Inside Graduate Admissions, found committees reading files for unwritten signals of fit and promise as much as for the credentials actually listed (Posselt, 2016). That is one more reason a checklist of country-level entry requirements cannot substitute for a per-department read.

The same distinction sits inside a wider body of comparative research: Nerad and Heggelund's edited volume Toward a Global PhD? brings together scholars comparing doctoral education across Australia, Japan, the UK, the US, and other national systems (Nerad & Heggelund, 2008), and no two of those systems hand the admission decision to the same kind of body.

Who will actually work with you?

This service is run by people who have held doctoral positions and supervised or been supervised inside the systems you are applying to, which is why the professor assessment reads recent publications and funding status rather than a biography page. They know which signals a department actually acts on.

Across the whole MAAS roster of 100+ experts, 23% hold a doctorate and 43% hold a Master's degree, and a PhD-search case is matched only to the subset who have supervised or examined doctoral candidates inside the system you are entering. MAAS EdTech has run this kind of search since 2015.

See the anonymised expert roster on our experts page.

What does MAAS commit to?

MAAS has delivered more than 10,000 projects since it was established in 2015, and the same verify-before-you-send discipline that runs through every one of them governs how a professor list gets built here.

MAAS commits to verified targets and honest assessment: departments checked against their own admissions pages, professors confirmed active before approach, and a straight answer about your competitiveness even when that answer is uncomfortable.

• Universities and departments verified against their own official admissions pages, with sources you can check
• Professors confirmed to be active in your sub-field before we approach them
• Personalised outreach drafted for you, plus drafting support for the negotiation where the system allows it
• Honest assessment of your competitiveness, including when the answer is uncomfortable
• Confidentiality of your documents and your search

What does MAAS not do?

MAAS does not sell a place or a scholarship, does not write your proposal or statement of purpose, and never claims influence over an admissions decision, because the decision belongs to the professor and the committee.

• A PhD place or a scholarship, because that decision belongs to the admissions committee and the professor
• Writing your research proposal or statement of purpose for you
• Any claim of personal influence over an admissions decision

Who writes the emails to professors, and who sends them?

This is the stage where most searches stall. Emily Henderson and her co-authors ran a 2025 diary study that tracked 19 supervisors over 6 weeks at one UK research-intensive university and logged 63 separate approaches from prospective applicants in that period alone, and the supervisors who replied said the deciding factor was whether the message showed the sender had read their actual current papers rather than their staff bio, according to that same study, published in Research Papers in Education (Henderson et al., 2025).

MAAS drafts a personalised approach letter for each professor, built from a comparison between your research direction and their own recent work. Nothing is sent until you have read it and approved it. MAAS then sends it, and runs the schedule, the tracking and the follow-ups, from a dedicated academic mailbox opened in your name for this search. At the end of the engagement that mailbox is handed over to you with its correspondence history intact, so the relationships built during the search stay with you.

The division is deliberate: the words are yours and nothing leaves without your approval, while the sending, the tracking and the chasing are ours. Searches rarely fail on the quality of a letter. They fail on volume and timing, because a dozen or more targets, each chased on its own schedule across months, is a scheduling job on top of a full-time one.

One line is worth drawing clearly, because it decides how your file is read. Correspondence is one thing, and your application is another, and the application stays entirely yours. MAAS never submits an application on your behalf, is never named as your representative, and holds no relationship with any university you apply to. Every application goes in under your own name, by you. That is what the anti-agent rules some universities publish are actually about, representation and submission, and neither of those is anything MAAS does. Where a particular department asks that first contact come from a personal address, MAAS flags it and prepares that one letter for you to send from your own account.

MAAS prepares the strategy, the letter and the negotiating position behind that message. When a professor replies, MAAS helps you settle the five things that actually decide whether an offer is real: the intake you would join, the funding attached to it, the requirements still outstanding, the timeline, and who holds the decision.

The reasoning behind this is the same reason MAAS will not draft your proposal. You are the person who has to defend this research in an interview, and a file you did not build is a file you cannot defend.

How is the service priced?

Pricing is quoted per case rather than published as a fixed rate, because the work depends on how far your proposal already is, how many systems you are targeting, and how much of the search has to be run from scratch.

Fees are staged against delivery, so payment follows work you have already received rather than work still promised. Third-party costs such as university application fees, test fees, certified translation and visa charges are paid by you directly to those bodies and are itemised per university during phase 2, so they do not arrive as a surprise.

Deadlines move faster than you think. Book a free 15-minute consultation: support@maasedtech.com or +84 979 422 393 (Zalo / WhatsApp). The right professor, approached the right way.

Not ready to book a call? That is a normal place to be. Send the brief on Zalo or Messenger and ask for a figure, no call, no form, no commitment. If the answer is that MAAS is not right for your case, you will be told that too.

Frequently asked questions

MAAS narrows your research direction, shortlists departments you actually qualify for, profiles funded professors in your sub-field, and prepares personalised outreach that you approve before MAAS sends it from your campaign mailbox, while admission and funding decisions remain with the professor and the committee.

Which countries does MAAS cover?
MAAS does not work from a fixed country list. Entry requirements vary by department, not by country. Two universities in the same city can have opposite rules, so we shortlist by your profile first and the country list comes out of step 2, not before it. This is also why Posselt (2016) found committee-run admissions weighing unwritten criteria as heavily as written ones: a country-level checklist cannot predict how one specific committee will read a specific file.

Why do so many emails to professors go unanswered?
Because most of them are generic. The same 2015 field experiment that audited 6,500 professors found reply rates highest for messages that engaged with one specific recent paper rather than a department in general (Milkman, Akinola, & Chugh, 2015). MAAS reads that paper before it drafts your letter, which is also why a UK diary study of supervisors' inboxes found the deciding factor was specificity, not politeness (Henderson et al., 2025).

Can MAAS guarantee a PhD place or a scholarship?
No. Admission and funding decisions belong to the admissions committee and the supervising professor. MAAS commits to the right targets, the right timing, a competitive application, and direct negotiation where negotiation is possible.

Do I need a GMAT or GRE score?
It depends entirely on the department. Some business schools require it with no exceptions, others have dropped it, and many systems never used it. This is exactly what step 2 checks before you spend months preparing for a test you may not need.

Does MAAS write my research proposal?
No. You write it. MAAS narrows the research direction, checks that your question is answerable with the methods available to you, and gives developmental feedback across drafts.

What if I have no publications yet?
Publications are rarely a stated requirement, but they strengthen a funded application against a global pool. If a paper can reach under-review status before your deadline, that changes how your file reads. A small number of programmes do require published work, and we screen those out early.

How long does the search take?
The profile and positioning work runs over the first few weeks, and outreach begins once the professor table is agreed. Because letters go out four to six a week and each target is followed up before it is closed, the campaign runs over months rather than days, and it is planned backwards from the application deadline you are aiming at. For comparison, the informal pre-application stage alone typically runs 6 weeks or more before a formal file is even opened (Henderson et al., 2025).

What if my proposal method is wrong for the question?
MAAS says so during the audit, and explains why. Reconstructing a design is a significant change, so it is proposed to you with the reasoning and decided with you, never applied to your proposal without your agreement.

Why does supervisor-led versus committee-led matter more than the country?
Because that is the real dividing line between admissions systems, rather than ranking or geography. Toward a Global PhD?, edited by Nerad and Heggelund in 2008, gathers scholars comparing exactly that axis across national systems, and MAAS uses the same frame to decide when to write to a department directly instead of guessing from the country name (Nerad & Heggelund, 2008).

Will you actually search for positions and supervisors for me, or only advise me on the ones I find?
MAAS runs the search. You are not handed a method and left to apply it yourself. MAAS narrows your research direction, screens departments against requirements you actually meet, reads the recent work of each candidate professor to confirm they are currently supervising and funded, and builds the target list from that. Advice-only services stop at explaining how this is done. The difference shows up in the part nobody enjoys, which is reading dozens of admissions pages and funding pages to find the handful of places where your particular profile is competitive. It is also the part that decides the outcome: the 2015 field experiment that audited more than 6,500 professors across 259 institutions and 89 disciplines found only 67% of first-contact emails drew any reply at all, and sending more of them is not what moves that number (Milkman, Akinola, & Chugh, 2015).

Who sends the emails to professors, and is it still my own application?
MAAS sends them, from a dedicated academic mailbox opened in your name for the search, and only after you have read and approved each letter. That mailbox is handed to you at the end of the engagement with its correspondence history intact. Your application is a separate matter and stays entirely yours: MAAS never submits an application on your behalf, is never named as your representative, and holds no relationship with any university you apply to. Where a department asks that first contact come from a personal address, MAAS flags it and prepares that one letter for you to send yourself.

Do you find fully funded positions, or only help with the application?
Both, and funding is the first filter rather than the last. A place without funding is not an outcome most candidates can accept, so departments are screened on funding for international candidates before anything else is assessed. In the sciences in Europe much of the funded intake moves through advertised, project-attached vacancies with fixed deadlines, and the European Commission directs candidates to consult those openings on the EURAXESS portal, which listed more than 7,000 open research offers on 28 August 2026. MAAS tracks that channel and works the unadvertised one alongside it.

I already have a shortlist. Can you just run the outreach?
Yes, although the shortlist is verified before it is used. Lists built from rankings or from a supervisor's topic page usually contain academics who are not currently taking doctoral students, or whose funding cannot carry one, and approaching them costs weeks that a deadline rarely allows. Where a shortlist survives that check, the engagement can begin at the positioning and outreach phases instead of the profile phase, and the scope is quoted accordingly.

Can you help if my field is laboratory science rather than business?
Yes. Each case is staffed with a doctoral-level specialist in the candidate's own discipline, recruited for that case where the existing roster does not already hold the right person, and the standard terms provide that if MAAS cannot staff a case to that standard the opening instalment is refunded in full. Across the MAAS roster of 100+ experts, 23% hold a doctorate, and a PhD-search case is matched only to that subset. This matters more in the sciences than almost anywhere else, because a supervisor is assessing whether you understand their methods, and an advisor who cannot read those methods cannot prepare you for that conversation.

Do you work with candidates outside Vietnam?
Yes. MAAS was founded in Vietnam and much of its early work was with Vietnamese candidates studying abroad, but the search is not bound to one nationality in either direction. The service runs in English and online, and MAAS has delivered more than 10,000 projects across 20+ disciplines since 2015. The question that decides whether MAAS can help is not where you are, but which admissions system you are entering and whether your profile is competitive inside it.

How is this different from a study-abroad agency?
The usual agency relationship is advisory. You are told which programmes to consider, your documents are reviewed, and you carry out the search and the correspondence yourself. This service is built around execution instead: the target list is produced by MAAS, each approach letter is written by MAAS, and the campaign is sent and followed up by MAAS from your campaign mailbox with your approval at every step. What does not change is authorship. You write the research proposal, you sit the interview, and you submit the application under your own name. The reason execution is worth paying for is visible in the 2025 diary study that tracked 19 supervisors at one UK research-intensive university over 6 weeks and logged 63 separate approaches in that period alone: your letter competes for attention against a queue, and the sender who has read the actual current papers is the one who gets an answer (Henderson et al., 2025).

Can you find positions that have not been advertised yet?
That is where much of the value sits. A funded doctoral line frequently exists inside a grant for months before any vacancy is posted, and the academic holding it is reachable during that window and effectively unreachable once fifty other candidates can read the same advertisement. Finding those groups means reading recent publications, funding acknowledgements and group pages rather than job boards. It is slow work, and it is the reason most candidates never work this channel at all. It also needs starting early, because the informal pre-application stage alone typically runs 6 weeks or more before a formal file is opened (Henderson et al., 2025).

Can you help with MSCA Doctoral Networks and other EU-funded positions?
Yes, and the eligibility rules are checked before any effort goes into an application. The Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Networks, funded by the European Commission under Horizon Europe, require that a recruited candidate has not resided or carried out their main activity in the country of the recruiting organisation for more than 12 months in the 36 months immediately before the recruitment date, which can close an entire country to someone who has just completed a degree there while leaving the rest of Europe open. Several national schemes carry their own nationality or residence conditions, and these are mapped against your situation at the start rather than discovered after a rejection.

Related guide

• PhD Application Strategy: proposal first, or professor first? explains how the two admissions systems work, what "good enough to send" means for a proposal, and what each stage of the engagement produces.

References

Henderson, E. F., Akkad, A., Kier-Byfield, S., Burford, J., & Dangeni. (2025). Seeking supervisability: The inclusivity implications of doctoral supervisors' engagement with prospective applicants prior to formal admissions. Research Papers in Education, 40(2), 167–187. https://doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2024.2349989

Nerad, M., & Heggelund, M. (Eds.). (2008). Toward a global PhD? Forces and forms in doctoral education worldwide. University of Washington Press.

Milkman, K. L., Akinola, M., & Chugh, D. (2015). What happens before? A field experiment exploring how pay and representation differentially shape bias on the pathway into organizations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(6), 1678–1712. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000022

Posselt, J. R. (2016). Inside graduate admissions: Merit, diversity, and faculty gatekeeping. Harvard University Press.