Must Read Before You Contact Me

I receive numerous emails every year from candidates who are interested in applying to our PhD program at CUHK. Some rumors suggest that contacting professors before formally submitting the application could increase the likelihood of admission. While this may work in some cases, it doesn’t apply to our school. In some cases, letters are poorly written, which can reduce the chances of acceptance. To avoid confusion and bridge the information gap, I have compiled some facts and common “mistakes” below. All applicants are encouraged to read them, although they may only be relevant to the PhD in Communication program at CUHK.

• An admission committee manages admission to our PhD program. The committee evaluates your application materials and selects candidates for further interviews. The interviews will most likely be conducted via Zoom. You don’t need to contact any professors before applying. Once you are formally admitted, you will be able to select your supervisor. You don’t need to contact professors in advance, as the selection process is carefully designed to ensure fairness and impartiality.

• Our school does not accept undergraduate students or taught master’s (usually 1 year) students directly into our PhD program. If you don’t have an MPhil degree (or other research master’s degrees), you can only apply to our MPhil program.

• It’s important to note your professor’s title when addressing them. If you’re unsure of their title, it’s appropriate to address them as “Professor.” For a more formal approach, use “Dr. XXX.” Avoid using “Mr. Liang” or “Associate Professor Liang,” as these may come across as impolite, even if accurate. For instance, I once received an email addressed to “Dear Associate Professor/Dr. LIANG, Hai,” which included a slash and comma before my first name. Such a greeting is not recommended.

• I have dozens of publications, and I never expected someone else to read all of them. So I picked my favorites and listed them online: https://drhailiang.com/publications/. If you want to show that our research interests overlap, it would be much better if the articles you mention in your letter were from that list. I received letters mentioning my co-authored articles (e.g., where I am the third or fourth author) or articles I consider less important, which may lead me to think the applicant didn’t read my articles or has very bad taste.

• Be concrete about your research interests and ideas. It is not meaningful to say you’re interested in computational social science or social media analytics. It would help if you could show me more concrete examples of what you will research, e.g., theories, phenomena, and methods (it is equally terrible to say “using NLP/SNS”). I expected a concrete research design (don’t send me your proposal because we’re required not to comment on your proposals). Nevertheless, this is not the worst. I received some letters that mentioned the areas that I had never known.

• Communication, as a discipline, is closely connected to industries such as advertising, public relations, and journalism. However, work experience in these industries is not essential or sufficient to be a good communication researcher. Simply stating that you were a TV anchor or newspaper reporter is not meaningful unless you can demonstrate how it directly relates to your research.

• Applications for 2027-28 entry are now open. You can find more admission information, including the application timeline, requirements, procedures, FAQ, and Checklist, on our website: https://rpg.com.cuhk.edu.hk/. Applicants do NOT need to confirm with a supervisor before admission. To maintain a fair admission process, our teachers will not comment on any individual applicant’s performance. The School will be arranging online group consultation sessions on 21-23 & 26 October 2026 via Zoom. Our research faculty will introduce the programs, financial support, and admission requirements, and answer participants’ questions during the consultation. Interested applicants can register at this webpage and upload a two-page resume in English by 4 October 2026. Should you have any further questions after the consultation, please send them to com_pg@cuhk.edu.hk.

• Updating…

My Mentoring Style

Casual Inference

• The Effect: An Introduction to Research Design and Causality by Nick Huntington-Klein
• Causal Inference for The Brave and True by Matheus Facure Alves
• Causal ML’s documentation by Uber Technologies, Inc.
• EconML User Guide by Microsoft Research

Data Science

• Big Data and Social Science: Data Science Methods and Tools for Research and Practice by Ian Foster, Rayid Ghani, Ron S. Jarmin, Frauke Kreuter, and Julia Lane
• Python Data Science Handbook by Jake VanderPlas
• Data Visualization: A practical introduction by Kieran Healy

Machine Learning

• Interpretable Machine Learning by Christoph Molnar
• Deep Learning by Subir Varma and Sanjiv Das

NLP & Images

• Modern Approaches in Natural Language Processing by Carolin Becker et al.
• Foundations of Computer Vision by Antonio Torralba, Phillip Isola, and William Freeman

Bayesian Statistics

• Bayes Rules! An Introduction to Applied Bayesian Modeling by Alicia A. Johnson, Miles Q. Ott, and Mine Dogucu
• Doing Bayesian Data Analysis in brms and the tidyverse by A Solomon Kurz
• Easy Bayes with rstanarm and brms by Michael Clark

Legacy tools: