Contacting potential advisor for PhD Over the past few months I’ve contacted around 10 potential advisors at various schools of interest, and the only professor who has gotten back to me told me to wait until I was accepted if I wanted to work with him. My email strategy has been reading over papers from a professor and crafting personalized emails explaining who I was, why I was interested in their research, and asking if they had time to discuss what they are working on. Since many professors instruct to not even contact them until after a student is accepted, and many others don’t respond to prospective students, is it even worth trying to reach out? Is it still too late to keep trying to get in touch? It’s difficult to justify spending the time to look into a professor who doesn’t respond, but I keep hearing that it’s important to contact professors of interest before applying.
What might be very impressive is if you would be willing to apply as a special student.

This might be a good “backdoor” way to get into a top 10 university.

I worked in the office of graduate admissions at Harvard university:

Most do not realize that applying as a special student is just as competitive as applying as a degree seeking student, but in many cases you do not have to take the GRE

Here is the answer I gave to another person on this forum:

https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/61120/123306