站着说话，不嫌腰痛。Because I am not a professor, I cannot have any students. All I write here is my "day dream," WHAT IF I were a professor and had funding to support one Ph.D student. How should I pick this student from more than five applicants?

I will take each recommendation letter seriously. (I understand that letters from China may not be written by the senders. I was asked to draft a letter by Prof. L when I asked him for a letter to send me to the US in 1985. This is also not uncommon for US professors.) If I know the professor who wrote the letter and respect him, and if the recommendation is strong, I would pick his student/staff. Nothing else matters. It's that simple.

If I don't know the people who wrote the letter, I would ask my colleagues who may know the letter sender. Again, you can see how much I rely on recommendation. Too much, maybe.

If an applicant is from a country that I don't have any knowledge, I would reach out to colleagues from this country. In fact, I was asked a lot about Chinese students during my first 10 years in the US, as if I was supposed to know every Chinese in physical oceanography. (I actually did know many of them.)

GPAs should matter, but not as much as the letter. The ranking of the school where the student is/was? I don't think so; probably because I myself was not from a top-10 school.

By the way, I don't like such email, starting with "Dear Sir, ..." If a student is writing to ME, he or she should at least know who I am. (I know I am nobody, but if you want to be my student, don't you think you should know what I do for a living???)

To wrap up, and to make you feel you didn't really waste all your time reading this Blog, I did have funding for a post doc once, many years ago. How did I pick him out of N applications? The letter; yes, the letter from a well known colleague in the field.