This is a page of advice (and personal opinions) on applying to research math postdocs (mostly aimed towards US applications). For more advice/suggestions beyond what is offered here, one can consult, e.g., Bjorn Poonen or Lauren Williams. If any advice here contradicts what either of them (or your advisor) say, probably you should listem to them over me.

Table of Contents

• Disclaimer
• Some General Blanket Advice
• Finding Positions
  • US
  • Europe + Others
  • Some Fancy Positions
• NSF Postdoc
• Networking
• Rough Timeline
• Receiving/Responding to Offers
• Rec Letters
• Research Statement
• Other Application Materials
  • Teaching/Diversity Statements
  • Cover Letter
• Applying with a partner

Disclaimer

We begin with an obligatory disclaimer. I have only ever applied to postdocs once, I have only been a postdoc for barely a month (at time of writing), and I have never evaluated postdoc applications. So I am not an authority on this subject and some of my advice is probably misinformed. On the other hand, I was fortunate enough to get a good postdoc, including successfully coordinating with my partner, so hopefully some of this advice will be helpful. Generally speaking, you want to solicit advice from as many people as possible, with the understanding that everyone will be a little right and a little wrong in how they think their advice applies to you.

My goal with this page is to try and recall/record the various things I found helpful or wish I knew earlier when applying for postdocs. I also want to include personal tidbits of my own experiences applying as well as anecdotes I heard from others, not necessarily as suggestions that you do the same, but because I like to hear other people’s specific choices/experiences when I seek advice from them. I should also mention that I applied in Fall of 2024.

If you see this page and you think anything on here is bad advice, especially if you are someone who evaluates postdoc applications, then please let me know.

Some General Blanket Advice

Most, if not all, of this will be expanded upon below, but just to have this upfront, here’s some general advice:

• Start early. Most postdoc positions (on mathjobs) have due dates in November, but some applications are due as early as August 1 ¹.
• If you have ongoing projects you are excited about, try to finish them (or, at least, get a version on arxiv) before applying to postdocs, so you can include them in your cv, reference them in your research statement, etc.
  • For me, I had one paper come out about a week before NSF was due; that was not an accident.
  • Alternatively, if you cannot finish them before a deadline for any reason, you can also send drafts to your letter writers so they can talk about your upcoming work in their letters.
• If you haven’t already, make a website.
• Some applications have weird quirks or confusing wording. In such cases, there is usually someone you can email who will be happy to clear things up. However, speaking from experience, if you only start putting the application together a day or two before it is due, you may not have enough time to email them and wait for a response before you need to submit it.
• It is helpful to talk with other people applying in your year. Postdoc applications can be stressful and not-so-fun, so it helps to help each other through the process.
• Seek advice/input from lots of people. Also, have other people (including people not in your subject area) look at and give feedback on your application materials.
• You can ask a couple people you know who have (successfully) applied in previous years to share their application materials with you.
• Spreadsheets are your friends. You will have a lot of applications to keep track of; write them all down somewhere easily accessible/digestible.
• I once tried asking my advisor about what makes a good/successful postdoc, and one of things he said, paraphrased here based off memory, was that you want to establish mathematical independence (from your advisor). You should not only continue your PhD work, but should instead show people you have the ability to do your own mathematics beyond just following your advisor’s suggestions ². This sort of advice is echoed in the “deserted island test” (see Research Statement) another mathematician told me he likes.
• A typical postdoc offer is 3 years. It is not uncommon for people to combine multiple offers, in which case you might be able to line up additional postdoc years up front.
  • Having additional postdoc years guaranteed has obvious benefits, but also some things to be aware of. Apparently, when applying for TT (tenure-track), if you have been a postdoc for an extra long time, then you will tend to be judged to a higher standard. People will expect that, because you have had extra time, you will have proved extra impressive results.
• Definitely, some of what I say/mention no longer applies/exists because of Trump’s attacks on academia, so beware of this.

Finding Positions

Short answer: you can find a large chunk of the positions you will want to apply to on mathjobs, and many (though not necessarily all) of the non-mathjob positions can be found by looking at department websites and subscribing to mailing lists.

You probably want to apply to a lot of positions (especially since mathjobs helps make this easier). Personally, I ended up applying to about 45 positions and ultimately received 4 offers (more on this later; see Receiving/Responding to Offers). I think some people apply to closer to one or two hundred positions.

US

In the US, finding postdoc positions to apply to is relatively easy. For the most part, you just need to go to mathjobs, where most universities advertise their jobs. This site also helps somewhat standardize applications to most universities’ internal postdoc positions. It is worth checking this site every so often (especially once November comes around) because new positions might pop up on occassion. There are also many non-US jobs to which you can apply through mathjobs. However, even in the US, not every job is on mathjobs.

Beyond mathjobs, some universities post their jobs on Interfolio instead; for example, when I was applying, the University of Washington had their postdoc on Interfolio instead of mathjobs. Additionally, the UC’s in California have their own system for postdoc applications, separate from both mathjobs and Interfolio. The exact link depends on the school you wish to apply to (e.g. aprecruit.berkeley.edu v.s. recruit.apo.ucla.edu) and is best found by looking at the department website. In general, if you interested in applying to a specific department (especially if you do not see them on mathjobs), you can often check their website for a page listing open positions and how to apply.

It is also worth keeping in mind that various mathematical institutes will also fund (often short, maybe 1 or 2 semesters) some postdocs; see, e.g., SLMath or ICERM.

Europe + Others

It is my understanding that postdoc applications outside of the US tend to be less standardized. Some such positions will appear on mathjobs, but by no means all of them. Positions outside of the US tends to rely more on word-of-mouth advertising. They also tend to have more variance in when they open up (more on this later; see Rough Timeline). In Europe, I believe they are also generally funded by an individual mathematician’s grant(s) instead of by the department, which is part of why the system is more ad hoc. That said, here’s some general advice for finding non-US positions:

• Talk to your advisor. They may know someone looking for a postdoc or know other tricks for finding positions.
• Additionally, if you know postdocs who have lived/worked in the county you are applying to, talk to them to.
• Subscribe to mailing lists. Some subjects have (worldwide) mailing lists that are often used to advertise job openings (and conferences and other news), though how active they are may vary. I know there is one for algebraic topology which is quite active and one for number theory. You can ask your advisor if there is such a mailing list in your subject area.
• Additionally, pay attention to department emails. Some times these will contain advertisements for job postings. For example, my partner ended up taking a position at MIT that we first heard about from an email advertisement blasted to everyone in the MIT math department.
• More directly, it may be that the best way to know if someone is taking postdocs is to contact them directly (or to ask your advisor to do so on your behalf).
  • Keep in mind it may look bad if you do this too strongly, but then don’t take the offer.
• For jobs in the UK specifically, there is the website jobs.ac.uk, which is some times described as a mathjobs analogue. When I was applying, I did not find it as useful as mathjobs, but it is still worth checking it every so often in case something relevant to you pops up.
• Also in the UK, UK Research and Innovation may fund some relevant positions.
• At Oxbridge (and possibly elsewhere in the UK), postdoc positions are often associated to the individual colleges (as opposed to the whole university), so the best way to find them is to go through each college’s website separately. These also tend to have earlier deadlines.

Some Fancy Positions

Finally, there are certain notable postdocs which may be hard to find if you do not already know about them. These tend to have early (i.e. pre-November, some in August or September) deadlines, sometimes require you to identify a host mentor in your application ³, and sometimes require that you be “nominated” to apply (in practice, this means you ask your advisor to nominate you). They may also require an interview (in which case, it is helpful to ask people who have applied previously for advice on interviewing). Some such positions include (this is a non-exhaustive list, mostly because I do not know all such positions):

• Klarman Fellowship at Cornell
• LSA Collegiate Fellowship at UMich
• Presidents Postdoctoral Fellowship
• Harvard Society of Fellows
• Simons Society of Fellows in NYC
• Berkeley Miller Fellowship
• Marie Curie Fellowship
• Clay Fellowship
• MIT School of Science Postdoc (I linked to the application page for the 2024 season because this postdoc has a surprisingly poor online presence)
• Stanford Science Fellows
• Cambridge Herchel Smith Postdoc
• CRM Postdoc in Canada (can think of this as Canadian NSF)
• FSMP Postdoc in Paris
• There may be other positions attached to the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) in Germany, the CNRS in France, the Royal Society in the UK, etc.

I did not know about all of these when I was applying, so I am not well versed in what each one entails, but I would generally suggest applying to as many as possible. Personally, I knew about/applied to I think 9 of them; doing so was very helpful in getting (several versions of) my research statement done early (and I accepted an offer from one of them).

NSF Postdoc

For US citizens ⁴, you should also apply to the NSF postdoc. For this, you will need to have a mathematician at your desired host institute agree to sponsor your application (if you have someone in mind, it is better to ask them earlier rather than later; else, someone else may ask them first ⁵). If you are awarded the fellowship, the NSF will fund 24 months (18 academic months + 6 summer months) of your postdoc ⁶; they do not need to be consecutive, but must be contained within a 48 month period and must begin between June 1 and Oct 1 of the year you are awarded.

Other things to keep in mind with the NSF postdoc include:

• It is common to combine this with other postdoc offers, either at the same institute or a different one.
• While the NSF only funds 2 years of postdocs, your host institution will often let you stay for 3 years total, where you just have to teach for the two semesters not covered by NSF.
• Your host institution does not have to be in the US.
• Your second year of the postdoc does not have to be at the same institution; you can opt to take it elsewhere. Because you are paid by the NSF, I think most departments tend to be willing take in an NSF postdoc.
• If you have questions about the application or offer, you can reach out to one of the program contacts (and setup a phone call or zoom, especially if you want to ask something specific to your situation).
• Submitting the application will take longer than you expect (I think it took me several hours, after my proposal was already written), so do not start the submission process too late. There are just a lot of NSF-specific documents/procedures you need to go through and the instructions are not always the most clear.
  • There are lots of formatting guidelines/rules when submitting your various documents. It can be hard to know if you have followed all of these perfectly just by reading the guide. When you submit a document, the NSF system performs an automated formatting check. If you pass this, you should not worry. The humans who look at your application will not be more stingy than the automated check is.

There was also a second NSF postdoc in mathematics, MPS-Ascend, but sadly, it seems unlikely to accept new applicants in 2025. This postdoc had an explicit emphasis on candidates who would work to broaden the participation of underrepresented racial minorities in mathematics (so, for example, your proposal needed to included specific actions you intended to take once at your host institution). If this is something you are interested in, and you are reading this sufficiently far into the future, you should check if either it still exists or if some sort of spiritual successor to it now exists ⁷.

Networking

Networking is an important piece of one’s mathematical career. Unfortunately, it is a skill I have not yet managed to get good at, so I cannot offer much advice here beyond parroting what others have told me.

• Have a website and indicate on it that you are currently on the job market.
• You should expect to travel a lot the year you apply. You want to give as many talks as possible and go to many conferences in order to help get your name out there.
  • Ask your advisor for suggestions on where to travel.
  • Also, talk to other speakers/participants at the conferences you go to. Even just asking the speaker a question after a talk counts for something.
• Attending European conferences can be another good way to hear about some of the word-of-mouth postdoc opportunities which are available.
• If you have trouble putting yourself out there, one way to start a conversation about hiring is asking professors if they have any tips for applying to postdocs.
  • This both can let them know you are on the market and get you some good advice.
• I was once told that November is a particularly good time to be travelling/networking, because this is around when many postdoc applications will start being submitted, so it is helpful if you are fresh on people’s minds when they start evaluating applications.
• Your advisor can email people on your behalf to see if you can talk in their seminars.
• If you speak at a department seminar, don’t aim your talk at only the experts. People will be more excited to have you join their department if you seem like someone they can easily talk math with.

Rough Timeline

In later sections, I’ll say some words about application materials, offers, etc. Before that, since it might be helpful, here’s a rough timeline of what applying to postdocs might look like, based off of my experience. As with essentially everything on this page, this timeline is geared towards US applications.

• At least one semester before you apply
  • Decide who you want to write your teaching letter. Ask them to observe you teaching and to take notes. The notes will help them remember what to say when writing you a teaching letter; they can also be useful to you as feedback on how to improve your teaching.
• Summer before you apply
  • Do a bunch of math travel (keep doing this throughout the year)
  • Talk with your advisor about where to apply, who your letter writers should be, with whom you should apply to NSF, etc.
  • Potentially start preparing drafts of your application materials, especially your research statement.
• August
  • If you apply to be a Harvard junior fellow, nominations are due August 1. This will probably be your first deadline (potentially by like a month or two).
• September
  • You might have deadlines for some of the other “fancy positions” in this month.
  • If you have not already, you should probably start asking people to write you rec letters.
  • If you have not already, you should probably share (drafts of) your application materials with your letter writers.
  • The NSF requires three reference writers (not including your sponsor), so 4 is a good number of letter writers to have.
• October
  • NSF is due mid-October. For many people, this is their first deadline.
  • Some applications on mathjobs may be due at the end of October.
• November
  • Most applications on mathjobs will be due in this month.
  • By now, you should have your application materials ready to go, so most application submissions should be fairly easy/straight-forward.
  • For some of the applications with earlier deadlines, you may start receiving rejections already by the latter part of this month. Just be aware that you will likely get your first rejections before your first offers.
• December
  • I think some top places will send out their first round of offers during this month.
    • This is when I received my Harvard offer; I also know MIT sent out some offers during this month the year I applied.
  • Waiting to hear back can be very stressful, so remember to give grace/patience to yourself and others who are applying.
• January+February
  • You will probably hear back from most places during these two months.
  • Negotiate offer details (more on this later; see Receiving/Responding to Offers).
  • The NSF postdoc usually sends offers around the end of January, I believe.
    • Most US departments agree to not require you to respond until about a week after NSF comes out.
  • Because most people who are offered an NSF postdoc take it, many departments may wait until after NSF comes out before sending out their offers ⁸.
• March and beyond
  • The application season does not actually end in February.
  • You may still hear from some schools in these later months.
    • I had a few surprising emails from places indicating interest in me in these later months; the latest such email came in early April, but such things can come even later.
    • It is especially important to respond quickly to such emails at this stage of things. If you are no longer interested in a position from them (e.g. because you already accepted a different offer), say so; you don’t want to hold up someone else who is waiting to hear back.
  • European positions are definitely still in play in these later months.
    • There were still open postdoc positions advertised on the ALGTOP-L mailing list throughout the spring semester when I applied.
    • I vaguely remember hearing someone (who applied the year before me) getting the postdoc offer they took only in like June or something.

Receiving/Responding to Offers

Here are some things you should know about postdoc offers.

• Schools can be surprisingly cautious in making offers. They do not make an offer to everyone whom they would like to have in their department; they also consider if they think the person would likely accept their offer.
  • As an extreme example, I know one person who had a school say they were rejecting him because they heard he was applying to NSF at a top university and so felt it was unlikely he would end up accepting an offer from them; this was before NSF results had come out.
  • More commonly, schools may reach out to you to ask if you are still interested in them before (considering) formally sending you an offer.
• Most places are willing to let you delay your start date by a year if you want to for any reason.
  • One big exception to this is the NSF postdoc, which requires you begin the year you receive your offer. However, your second year of NSF does not have to immediately follow the first.
• Additionally, in the US, most departments agree to not require responses until (about a week) after NSF results come out. The joint deadline they agree to abide by is usually posted by the AMS.
• If you think you want to combine offers or would like more time before responding to an offer, do not be afraid to ask.
  • When you receive an offer, if you would seriously consider accepting it, but only in combination with something else or only under other specific circumstances, it is helpful to send a reply where you explain your situation and ask them if they would be amenable to this.
  • I ended up combining 3 postdoc offers (for a total of 5 years). This involved multiple email chains and a lot of back-and-forth to get permission from everyone, but everyone involved in the process was kind and understanding, even as I asked them for time to check with other parties and asked about various scenarios of what the combination could look like (mostly based around if I do/don’t receive NSF and different strategies for satisfying certain scheduling constraints the offers imposed).
• It may also be possible to negotiate some details of your offers.
  • For example, if you prefer to go to school A, but school B offered you a position with higher pay or less teaching, you can ask place A if they’d be willing to improve the terms of your offer.
  • I personally did not do this (other than to negotiate combining offers), but I know some people who did this successfully.
• Departments are often receptive to questions about the status of your application.
  • If you receive an offer from school A, but you are waiting to hear back from school B where you would rather be, you can send an email to school B explaining that you just got this offer you need to respond to and asking about your chances of receiving an offer from them. This is a normal sort of thing.
    • Not all schools/positions will be allowed to answer such questions, but many will, and worst-case scenario, they just say they can’t tell you. I think the NSF, in particular, usually shies away from such questions.
  • Similarly, if you are trying to coordinate with a partner and one of you receives an offer from a place, they can send an email explaining that you are partners and ask about your chances of receiving an offer as well.
    • In my case, my partner sent a few such emails on my behalf, and people were often willing to share the behind-the-scenes status of my application. This was helpful for evaluating our options for postdocing together as the situation evolved.
• I think departments appreciate it if you update them (e.g. respond to offers, withdraw if you have an offer you prefer from elsewhere, etc.) as soon as you are comfortable doing so.

Rec Letters

That was everything I had to say about procedure. Let’s talk about the applications themselves. Probably the most important part of your applications will be your rec letters. Most applications will require some number of rec letters (I think 3 is pretty common), mostly focussed on your research, optionally with one focussed on your teaching. Typically your advisor will write one letter. For your other (research) letters:

• You want all of your rec letters to be strong. Quality matters more than quantity ⁹, so, for example, 3 strong letters is better than 3 strong letters + 1 weak letter.
  • Collaborators are often great choices.
• As with applying to grad school, the more senior/well-known a letter writer is, the better. However, this needs to be balanced with the strength of the letter; don’t get hung up on asking someone famous if they do not know you ¹⁰.
• Your letter writers do not necessarily need to know you personally super well. It is more important that they be familiar with your work and able/willing to say nice things about it. It is common to ask someone you’ve, for example, only met at conferences. In all cases, try to make their job as easy as possible for them.
  • People typically suggest asking potential letter writers at least one month before their first deadline.
  • Send them your application materials, especially your research statement and cv (drafts are fine).
  • Let them know where all you are planning on applying and what deadlines they need to be aware of.
  • Offer to meet with them in person or over zoom to talk about your work and/or answer any questions they may have.
  • If you have ongoing work you would like them to comment on, share it with them. Generally, if you have specific things you would like them to comment on, tell them.
  • All this advice applies also to “hosts/sponsors” for postdoc applications which require you to name one (e.g. NSF, Miller, etc.).
• Postings on mathjobs will differ in the number of rec letters they require (e.g. they may ask for “4 letters” or “at least 3 letters” or “2-5 letters” or …), but when you submit your application, you are generally allowed to submit as many as you want. Even if the description calls for a specific number (e.g. says “3 letters”), in practice, most people will ignore this and submit as many as they want, and so you should too. Some other application systems will enforce more strict limits on the number of rec letters you submit.
  • I did not know this at first and so was carefully selecting which letters to send where depending on how each posting wording its requirement (including, in the extreme, sending only 1 teaching + 2 research letters some places). However, after talking with my advisor about this requirement at MIT (which was one place asking for “three letters” including a teaching letter), he checked and saw that most people were submitting more than three letters. So then I went and updated my application to there and many other places.
• In my case I had 4 (research) letter writers, two from my department (including my advisor), one from a department down the street, and one from a mathematician I had met at many conferences. None of them were collaborators of mine, but they were all people I had talked to a non-trivial amount, I met with (half of) them to describe all my work throughout grad school, I shared all my application materials with them, and I sent (half of) them an early draft of a paper I was working on.

For your teaching letter:

• The main piece of advice is to have your writer physically watch you teach/lecture at least once.
• Additionally, you can ask undergrads you’ve mentored to send them comments.
• You should also share your teaching letter and student feedback you’ve received with them.

Research Statement

This is the main place where you get to advertise yourself/your work. Different applications will require different materials, but essentially all of them will include a research statement. The length/content requirements vary by application, so you will end up needing to maintain multiple versions of this document (I must’ve had like circa 10 versions or something). For my “generic” research statement that I submitted to most places on math jobs, I kept it 4 pages (not including references), but I think most people have their “generic” one be 5 pages ¹¹. When writing your research statements, keep in mind the following:

• The people reading your statement won’t necessarily be in your subject area. In fact, given how many applications a postdoc committee needs to get through, most people looking at it probably will both (a) not be in your subject area and (b) not spend time looking beyone the first page or so.
  • As a result, it helps to make it easy to read/navigate, e.g. by including clickable hyperlinks/references; by clearly making theorem statements, problem suggestions, etc. standout (i.e. use latex environments); by using bullet points; etc.
• It should be somewhat understandable to the generic mathematician. The beginning (first page, say) should be readily accessible to the generic mathematician.
• It is nice if you can have a theorem statement (of yours) already on the first page.
  • Don’t be too technical; no need to state the most general or most precise version. You can always say, “roughly, blah; see [Citation] for more details”
• In mine, I liked to briefly summarize the various sections/projects in the beginning before getting into more details later.
• You should suggest potential problems/projects you could work on. They do not need to be revolutionary.
  • As part of making your statement easy to read/navigate, you can put these under an explicitly marked future directions or proposed projects or (whatever else) section.
  • It is good to have a mix of easier, more readily-attainable suggestions and longer term, more ambitious goals. Start with the easier stuff.
  • Do not claim you will prove the Riemann hypothesis.
  • It is helpful if you can (implicitly or explicitly) justify why you in particular are capable of making progress on the problems you suggest.
    • I think when I was applying, I received some conflicting advice on how explicitly one needs to do this, so I suppose it depends on who’s reading your statement.
  • You are not bound to do the projects to suggest in your research statement, but it is helpful to put real thought into what you could work on as a postdoc.
• Other suggestions I have heard include:
  • Include example/pictures if you can.
  • Say if your work has been used in other work.
  • Explain why your results are interesting and what makes your proof(s) new/interesting/challenging.
• Many people told me that you want your research statement to provide a clear narrative; it should be more cohesive than “here’s a list of everything I worked on in grad school”. So it is good to spend time thinking about how best to construct a narrative of your work.
  • Personally, I think I did not do so good a job at this.
• One mathematician told me that, when evaluating postdoc applications, he likes to employ the following “deserted island test” ¹², paraphrased here: if this person was left by themselves on a deserted island for 3 years, with an internet connection for checking arxiv and such, would they still produce some good math in that time?
• Don’t make it too long, e.g. 10 pages is too long. At some point, I was told that 7 pages is already too long. Many postings on mathjobs won’t indicate an explicit length limit, but some other applications may.
• Some applications (e.g. the Miller) will ask for a statement that is very short with a very broad audience, e.g. one page (including references) addressed to a general scientist. Such statements are very hard to write well, but one must try.
• Get people (professors, grad students, etc., both in and out of your area) to read and comment on your research statement!
• It is unclear, to me, how helpful the following is (though it certainly can’t hurt), but you can consider writing a long version of your research statement that you link to in the short version you submit. This gives more information to any interested readers.
  • Definitely focus on polishing the short version moreso than the long version.
  • It is not clear to me that anyone actually looks at the long version in this case, but it does not hurt to do this.

As some examples, here are three versions of my research statement: the long version I put on my website, my NSF proposal, and a one page version I needed for one of my applications (admittedly, this last one was unsuccessful, so do with that what you may).

Other Application Materials

The rest of your application will usually consist of some subset of a teaching and/or diversity statement, a cover letter, a CV, and a description/extended abstract of your dissertation. I suppose it is on you to figure out what goes in this last one, and CVs are common enough that I imagine you have a decent idea of what to put in one (if not, there are numerous examples on various mathematicians’ websites), so I will just say a few words about the other two ¹³.

Teaching/Diversity Statements

For better or worse, it is my understanding that the main point of such statements is to show that you are not crazy. That is, having a great statement will not help your application that much more than having an ok statement, but having an ok statement will help it much more than having a bad statement. Still, you should put time and thought into trying to write both a good teaching statement and a good diversity statement. For your teaching statement:

• Talk about the various teaching experiences you have had.
  • You can include information about the (mathematical) background and number of students
• Give concrete examples about your teaching experience/habits.
  • For example, giving challenge problems to students who were bored/unchallenged.
• You can discuss your teaching philosophy/style/values
• Include (positive) student feedback

For your diversity statement, I think this often has large overlap with your teaching statement (indeed, probably most ways you’ve supported diversity in mathematics involved some amount of teaching/mentorship). Beyond what could also go in your teaching statement, you can include personal reflections of your own experiences in mathematics and on your thoughts concerning the intersection of diversity and mathematics.

Cover Letter

Each application will need a separate cover letter. Typically, these can be rather short. Most of my cover letters basically read as follow

To the Hiring Committee:

I'm a grad student at [school] working with [advisor]. I am interested in [insert position here].

My researching interests are [one or two sentence description]. In your department, I would be primarily interested in working with [two or three professors].

My thesis will be on [title]. Additionally, [teaching experience in a sentence or two].

[sentence about applying with a partner]

Thanks,
[name]

They were not literally the above template, but you get the idea. You basically just want to introduce yourself and say the position you are interested in applying to. I only have a few additional comments to make here:

• If you have extra information you would like to share with the committee (e.g. that your partner is also applying for the same position), then this is a decent place in your application to include that information.
• If there is a professor you are interested in working with, name them in your cover letter (even if there are like 5 such professors). If you don’t name them, but do name some other professors, they may get the impression you don’t want to work with them.

Applying with a partner

Finally, if you have a partner who is applying the same time as you, here is some advice for trying to coordinate jobs. Unfortunately, this is quite a hard thing to guarantee, so I have no game-changing secrets to share. Additionally, I think every couple handles things different (e.g. my partner and I explictly referenced each other in our applications, but not every couple chooses to do this). That said, things to consider include:

• Apply to a lot of places. The more places you apply to, the more likely it is that you’ll have overlap in your offers.
• Keep in mind that some cities/areas (e.g. Boston) have multiple universities around and so provide bigger targets to hit.
• Opinions vary on if you should include in your applications that you are applying together.
  • It is my understanding that such information makes more of a differece for TT jobs than for postdocs, so do not expect this to make-or-break anyone’s application.
  • The potential upside is that if a department really likes one of you and is aware that you are a package deal, then they may be more willing to give the other an offer (again, I think this sort of thing happens more for TT jobs than for postdocs).
  • The potential downside is that if a department only likes one of you, then they may opt to offer neither of you a position if they feel the one person would reject them anyways because of this.
  • My partner and I chose to do this, by including a sentence at the end of each of our cover letters, essentially saying, “My partner, [name], is also applying for math postdocs in [school/city/area], so I would be especially happy to come here.”
    • In my opinion, I did not get the impression this made much of a difference in how our applications were evaluated ¹⁴. At the very least, for the places my partner heard back from first, she would email to ask about the status of my application; their responses never seemed, to me, to suggest they were already aware of and considering the fact that we were coupled.
• Even if you do not say anything in your official application, you can also consider informally telling some places that you are applying with a partner.
  • For example, you can email/otherwise inform someone friendly in the department who you already know (e.g. a potential advisor).
• Once you start receiving offers, feel free to reach out about the status of your partner’s application
• If either of you get NSF, you can move it to your partner’s institution after one year.
• Obviously, communicate with each other about your applications and whatnot. You can also let your advisor/letter writers know you are applying together in case they have any additional advice/insight.
• As indicated in the Rough Timeline, job offers ultimately come out at a fairly irregular schedule over the course of several months. So one of you may start hearing back from places before the other (even for places you both ultimately receive offers to), and it’s important to be patient with each other during this stressful time.