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How to judge a potential graduate student based on a short interview?
In my department, we typically have many more applications for MS/PhD students than we have open positions, so it is a "buyer's market" from the professor's point of view. Each student submits a relatively standard application package of grades, a resume, any awards or trophies from various academic contests, papers or patents they've published, and recommendation letters. Based on this, a short list of students are invited for short (<20 minutes) face-to-face interviews either in person or via teleconference.
My typical questions include:

what kind of career do you see for yourself after graduation?
what about my research interests you most?
explain your particular contribution to your undergrad research project

My problem is that many students look superficially the same, and in the interviews it is difficult to move them beyond standard responses that they know I want to hear. My belief is that this is my fault because I am not asking the right questions. While most of the students I have eventually accepted ended up working out just fine in my group, my error rate is still well above 0%, both in terms of gems I let go and those who were admitted but didn't excel.
In my perfect world I would be able to probe just that one level deeper to separate the wheat from the chaff. Are there any good tips for how, in a 10-20 minute interview, to get a deeper sense of a student beyond their "on paper" appearance?

Reducing the error rate to zero is probably impossible. People are people. Things happen.

@Buffy yes, and I also fully acknowledge that those gems who got away might very well NOT have excelled had they come to my group, i.e. they ended up exactly where they were supposed to be. Still my error rate is high enough that this is somewhere I think I can improve.

I think something you can probe students on is their weaknesses and willingness to reflect on them - the idea being you are hunting for resilient students in a sea of qualified people. “Can you tell me a time during your research where you were able to push past a limit you didn’t think that you could?”, “Tell me about a time that you failed at something, what did that experience mean for you?”, “How would you advise somebody who has hit a road block in their learning to get past that blockage?”
I think questions akin to these can elicit authenticity and character for your purposes.

Roland, GrayLiterature -- good insights; please consider converting your comments into proper answers

There are some excellent answers here. I'll add my approach.
I select a research paper that is relevant to the project/area I'm looking a PhD candidate for. Relatively entry level difficulty. I give the candidates a week to read the paper and during the interview I ask a few questions:

What problem is discussed in the paper?
Why is it important?
What solution did they propose and why was it better than the past ones?

It reveals to me a lot of things about the way they think, knowledge in the area, critical abilities, etc.

agree that there are many great answers. I think the "final answer" blends this approach, with asking detailed questions about their research projects, and preparing a short presentation. But I'm selecting this as "the answer" because I feel like testing critical thinking is the biggest missing component in my current approach, and I like this way to test their ability to think critically about technical problems.

This was the exact method that I have undergone during my graduate application, so from the student's perspective, I would like to add some points. First of all, you have to recognize that the interview process (and actually whole graduate application process itself) is a stressful time, so even when the student can understand the paper and even have the ability to build on it, it might harder for them to show this during the interview. For example, if you give me a paper and ask me to explain it in a written format beforehand, it is not a problem at all, but ...

when it comes to explaining the same stuff during an interview, my mind goes blank. So, it is always good to ask specific questions about the paper during the interview, because it helps a lot about "going blank".

To add some additional points: I think it is important to understand the flaws, unanswered questions in a paper, so I would also ask those.

Disclaimer: the following answer assumes that the prospect student will be working in a "collaborative" environment.
As stated in the comments, having the certainty that the chosen student will be the right one is impossible.
That being said, I think that the main purpose of these live interviews is not to assess the quality (in terms of skills, knowledge or expertise) of the potential candidates: evaluating the proficiency of the candidate is very difficult in such a short time; you should trust the CV and the reference letters.
On the contrary, your goal should be to understand if the prospect student is a good choice from a personal point of view.
"Will I want to work with this person?", "Will this person be capable of blending in with the other people in my lab?", "Will the other people in the department be able to collaborate (if necessary) with this person?": it is questions such as these that you should try to answer with the live interview.
In order to do this, try to ask unusual questions that may induce the candidate to reveal his true self. You could even try putting some pressure on him (try asking some specific questions that you know in advance he will not be able to respond) and see how he reacts.
In summary, assuming a 20minutes interview, I would structure it like this:

First 5 minutes: I will discuss the background of the candidate. The objective is to get the general picture of the student, and put them at ease.
5 to 15 minutes: I'll try to get to know their real persona. The candidate should be "warmed up", and this is the perfect time to evaluate their personal behavior and determine if they are fit or not for the role.
Last 5 minutes: I will ask for their career goals/research objectives and similar long-term plans. This is just to conclude the meeting in a more relaxed way for both parties.

By following a similar structure, the candidate should expect the first and last steps, but the middle (and most important) step will be unknown to him.
As for what questions to ask in the second phase -- they should be domain-specific questions which either fall directly into your area of expertise (and for which very few people know the right answer), or more open questions for which no real answer exists (yet). You can start with an "easy" question, and then elaborate a discussion that will end with one of the two options I provided.
Remember: the goal here is not to determine the student's preparation, but gauge their ability to deal with unforeseen circumstances.
Finally, these answers in another site may be useful to you:

Is stress interview a red flag when deciding whether to accept the offer?
Got into a (technical) argument with my interviewer - should I apologize?
As an interviewee, how to handle situations where the interviewer is unprepared or asking the wrong questions?

So, which questions for example?

One possible problem with this:  If PIs hire on the basis of whether a candidate will be able to “blend in”, and whether they as PIs feel an affinity towards them, it will be less likely (on average) that they will hire candidates from demographic & cultural groups other than their own.  I will leave it to the reader to decide whether they think this is acceptable.

"you should trust [...] the reference letters.": unless the student comes from a "proper" university in a developed country, I would advise against doing that, because not every academic environment has the same level of integrity and ethic values. I have seen lots of prof.s whom I've worked with who writes those letters for the purpose of just writing it, without caring how important it is for the student.

When interviewing candidates for industry jobs, I concentrated on two issues:

Is the resume accurate, or if inflated how much? A resume is a sales document, and candidates do try to present themselves as favorably as possible, but it should be fundamentally truthful.

Can the candidate discuss technical issues in the relevant field?

Everything else is covered by the paperwork.
Fortunately, there is one form of question that can help resolve both issues. Pick a topic, such a research project they claim to have done or a course they did well on, and ask about it. Do they know as much about the topic as the resume indicates, and can they discuss it?
As Buffy suggests in a comment, zero error rate may not be possible. Ultimately, you just have to do your best and accept you will make mistakes.

I would add something about judging their level of commitment and drive. In Spanish: "ganas"

I think this problem is more or less insoluble. But here are some things I look out for:

I always ask candidates to give a 5 minute presentation about a research project they have done. While there is a risk that this bias' against students who have had fewer research opportunities, all accredited degrees in my field should include a capstone project with at least some research component. The key here is that you are not looking at the quality of the results, but the quality of the presentation - in particular, does the candidate understand what they were doing and why (or why the awful project their supervisor made them do made no sense :)). This weeds out about a third of student who either don't or can't communicate an understanding of what they did and why.
I ask them to describe a recent paper they read. You'll be surprised how many can't bring a paper to mind.
I ask them why me - this is telling because you get a feel for whether they have read your work and understood it - that is, are they actaully interested in working with you, or did they just send their CV to everyone and anyone.

Rather than allowing you to select the best student, these hopefully allow you to weed out the worst, which I think is probably the best you can do.


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What software can extract block diagrams from pdf?
I am looking for ways to extract block diagrams systematically from a folder of pdfs so that I can compare them quickly. I tried pyMuPDF but it does not exactly extract figures but all the bitmaps in the figures instead. And it omits more semantically meaningful figures like block diagrams.
I found at least one Chinese literature reading site  manages to do that. But it only limits to some papers. I wonder how they do that also.

Reminder that software recommendations are generally on topic, so long as the request is sufficiently tied to academia as a whole.

There are multiple ways to store a diagram in a PDF file, some of which will not be easy to extract.

Note that there are some things that the authors of the PDF can do to make it hard to get stuff out. Usually not impossible, just annoying.

There is a number of tools to bulk extract images from PDFs, some common ones are listed here. However, it should be noted that like Anonymous Physicist said, diagrams are not always stored as images, and this makes the whole affair nightmarishly complicated. While I do not know if an off-the-shelf solution for this problem exists, PyMuPDF (the last example on this page) might have something close to the functionality you are seeking. But I am afraid getting clean and consistent results for all the possible PDF documents would be very hard.

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Giving a career talk in my old university, how prominently should I tell students my salary?
I have offered to do a talk at my old university’s 'employabilty fair' ten years after graduation, where am I now. With some advice on traps to avoid, how to make the transition from university to work life etc., with some anecdotes along the way type thing. Within the realms of software engineering.
The person who asked me to do the talk knows my current salary and thinks I should put this number on the first slide to grab their attention in a 'this is what you could aim for' type way. But I feel it's a bit crass. I don't mind sharing my salary with the students if they ask, but I think it's a bit odd to stick it on the first slide.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this that could help me make this decision?
Update
I discussed this with some recent grads in my company, and they agreed that I should not put the salary in the talk. The talk ended up going over very well; no one asked about my salary and I didn't see anyone suddenly become more engaged after I pointed to the salaries in the Glassdoor table. Perhaps a couple students might have listened more intently if I had framed it as "I earn X and this is how you can do to" but I'm glad I didn't; the focus of my talk was for the students that love software engineering.

I agree with you. I feel the request to put your salary on a slide (on the first slide, no less!) is rather unexpected, and quite frankly does not speak highly about the professionalism of your contact. I would decline this, for multiple reasons:

Your salary is nobody's business. Not sure what more there is to say about this.
Students are, for the largest part, intelligent adults. Many would take this exactly for what it's meant to be - rather crude marketing and hype generation. This would detract from the message you actually want to transport, and would undermine your following talk.
Focusing so much on how much you make is arguably not the best way to motivate young people for a specific career path anyway. If you talk about why you love your job (if you do) will encourage more people than a six-digits salary number. More importantly, it will probably encourage the people who will actually be happy doing your job, not the ones who would end up wealthy and miserable.

You can of course provide a salary range as proposed by other answers, but I would not emphasize this point much (and base it on third-party data, such as Glassdoor, not just your own experience).

Funnily enough I completely forgot I already had a side with a glass door table on it that has salary averages, the reason I'd forgotten it was because I included it for the job satisfaction column!

About the third bullet point, I beg to differ. Salary is objective. It's a number that everyone can measure + easily judge how valuable that number is to themselves. On the other hand personal enjoyment is harder to measure + varies from person to person. Maybe I love being a postman, but that doesn't mean you will, and you won't know until you try my job. Aiming for a particular career path because someone else thoroughly enjoys it is a dangerous place to be.

@Allure Software engineering salary range is a joke...it really needs to come with a distribution curve to be of any use at all. Overall compensation varies wildly (do you get meals and a free shuttle bus, or do you only get the cheapest, worst health care plan?), "hourly rate" is not related at all to salary (just how many hours do they expect you to be there, anyway?), and then there's the good old "everyone hired at the same level receives the same compensation"...but not everyone gets hired at the same level, even when they have the same qualifications.

Not discussing salary is a trained response that benefits only one side, the business you work for. We should be changing that. It is like believing that  money does not buy happiness. Money does buy happiness by giving people piece of mind and the ability to be able to pivot to things they enjoy.

As mentioned above, I don't have an issue discussing salary, and they are free to ask me, I just think its unusual to start the conversation I'm X and I earn Y. it could easily come across smug. While I agree that Salary ranges are confusing, the Median salary offered by glass door is closer to useful and it certainly gets across the point you will be able to pay the bills'

@Allure That's why I said "talk about why you love your job" - if I were to talk about why I love being an academic I would explain what aspects of the job are great (and which aren't), and you would be able to judge for yourself if that sounds appealing to you as well. A typical salary for academics can easily be looked up, the benefit for the audience is rather small. You are right that what I specifically make is an objective number, but it's also completely useless to my audience since they will likely not end up at the same university with the same sort of contract.

I wouldn't say necessarily that it's no one's business.  Many of us are public employees, and our salaries are (at least where I am in the US) a matter of public record.  As a tax payer I should know what my money is going to. That said, there's a huge difference between it being available and shouting it off a rooftop (besides of course not being directly comparable to an industry salary, given the very different working hours/conditions)

"Your salary is nobody's business" This is not the same as "you should not share it with people unasked"

"Your salary is nobody's business." Not in academia. I've always known my boss's and co-workers salaries, even as a grad student. It's necessary for budgets in grant applications. You just ask them or the department admin.

@NDEthos There are studies on the extent to which money buys happiness. If I recall correctly, it very much does until you reach a “middle class” income and then much less so.

Anyone who decides on software engineering as a profession because of the money is probably going to be a bad software engineer; you're only going to be any good at it if you are motivated by other things. It's like suggesting someone should become a professional footballer because it pays well. Also, salaries vary immensely; if you're prepared to endure a commute into central London you can earn a lot more than if you actually want a life. So demonstrate that software engineers are in demand and that good salaries are on offer, but don't make it your main selling point.

@NDEthos People usually don't discuss salary with strangers because they don't want to invite comparison - they want to avoid both jealousy (if salary is high) and pity (if salary is low). Money is a sensitive topic.

Update, the talk went down very well, no one asked about my salary and I didn't see anyone suddenly become more engaged after I pointed to the salaries in the Glass door table. There were a few very engaged students who I think will do just fine, they definitely seemed more interested in my day to day and whether I actually enjoyed it :p it was good to see

@chrispepper1989 you might add this concluding anecdote back into the original question? It seems useful context.

This is a really bad answer.

@Sulthan I mostly try to avoid other people deciding how and why I should be spending my money. A lot of people love to do it "Oh, he makes X, he should be buying A and B and spending on C, instead of what he does now" is something a hear too often. And there is of course the other armchair economists going "If I was making X, I'd be much better of than him because I'd be doing A and B with my money" that's usually without ever knowing or caring what the person spends on or saves for. Plenty of people are apparently "more deserving" of the money that others are making.

@NDEthos In the OP's country, it is not "a trained response that only benefits the company", it is a core piece of cultural etiquette. We don't do salary resentment over here, and we achieve that by not asking how much people make, and not telling people how much you make. It's not relevant to anything anyway.

"If you talk about why you love your job (if you do) will encourage more people than a six-digits salary number" -> a six-digit salary might convince students that getting a degree in underwater basket weaving is not the best idea, no matter how much they like it.

@chrispepper1989 It's good to hear that your talk went well!

I would think you can share the salary "Range", but I, like you, would not put it on the first slide.
ie after 3 years experience you could expect xxx to yyy as a zzzzzz.
This answers a second question that the OP had in the original post, now edited:
Sometimes students like to hear about a "real" problem and "how" it was solved - that process is usually interesting and can give them a "focus" of why they have to study xxxx.

I like your suggestion, I don't really have anything like that yet and I was feeling the presentation was lacking heart! So thanks

The Glass Door chart probably has medians.  Median is anyway the right measure for salary as mean can be skewed easily by a couple of outliers.

@BobBrown what glassdoor - you've lost me? I tend to find HR always give a salary range for x years of experience, y qualifications etc

@SolarMike  Glassdoor.com is a job search web site mentioned in a comment to another answer.  Among many other things, they publish median salary information for many occupations.  The real point of my comment is that median is the right measure when talking about salaries.

@BobBrown then you need to get that median idea across to lots of HR people who still produce tables with ranges for relevant qualifications and years of experience... Just received one recently - nice table but no median values shown...

@SolarMike  I'm workin' on it!  HR people in large organizations often administer salaries on a "Grade and Step" system.  So, an associate professor of computer science might be "Grade 15."  A newly-appoint associate prof would start at "Step 1" of grade 15 and advance until "topped out" at the highest step in the grade.  However, for comparing salaries across institutions, I want to know the median salary across the whole group and at each institution.

As a statistician, I consider that an unrepresentative sample of one is unlikely to convey any useful information at all. You would mislead your audience if you presented them with such stuff.
Those of us with experience of the world know that amazingly high salaries are sometimes available to amazingly under-qualified people. So there is no point in presenting that stuff either.
What I wish someone had told me when I was aged about 20 is what kind of life goes with particular professions. So, in your case: what is it like to be a software engineer? Can you spend your whole career doing that? or, do you need to be on the lookout for something better/ less stressful / more stressful but better paid etc? Where do you hope to be in 10 years time? What is the career path? Is there a career path? If I do moderately well as a software engineer, what sort of place will I be living in?
Your actual salary is irrelevant.

As far as I can see, none of the other answers mentions the UK aspect.
In the UK, you just don't go around asking people what their salary is. In this social context, if they're literally asking you to tell this class what you earn, that request is unreasonable.  However, it would seem useful to include a typical salary for a position similar to yours.  (Even if you don't think it's useful, the students don't have your experience and have a bunch of debt to pay off, so will most likely care a lot about this.)
That's a win-win: it avoids you having to reveal information that is considered very private in the UK, and it's actually more representative for the students. There are all kinds of reasons that your individual salary could be unusually high or low.

Some universities (such as the one where I work) publish their pay scales.  There's a level of abstraction between scale points and job titles but with a quick check of the salary bands in job adverts you could use the staff they're familiar with as a point of reference: "After a couple of years in industry I'm earning about as much as a lecturer".  The audience can consider that useful information in itself, or they can go to the pay scales to see what range that works out to.  In practice numbers on a salary don't necessarily mean all that much to undergrads anyway with taxes etc. to take into account, so a point of reference may be better anyway.
I use this approach myself as a postdoc with an industry job in the past.

The college I work for is a state school, and so falls under "Sunshine laws" - our name, job title, and current annual salary are available on request.

The pay scales are standardized across the UK higher education sector, aren't they? (With a separate scale for London, because everybody knows that's the only place in the UK where the cost of living is higher than average.)

@DavidRicherby to some extent they are. The UK tag is new since I answered so I didn't assume a location. I hear your subtext; I'm only a bit luckier than you in that regard.

At most I would publish a range from glassdoor or some other online career place. I personally wouldn't put it on the first slide either.
Depending on where you live, you might end up selling the salary short or giving them a nearly impossible target. In most regions of the US (not sure if this applies in the UK), salaries are adjusted for cost of living. I make only half as much as one of the kids I went to school with: I live in a moderate cost of living area (rural New Hampshire), and he lives in New York City. When I moved to my current locale, I got a 20% "raise" that ended up being only a minor raise in my take home because my bills and whatnot are higher.
If you are trying to sell the profession, I might compare it with another field, something like "software engineers make xx% more than mechanical engineers" with a reference.

Agree that sourced regional averages are much more useful than a single datapoint.

I see that the talk already occurred, so this answer may be of less value. Still I feel it is worthwhile to share;
As a former student I think sharing some kind of salary information would've been extremely appreciated. In University many people spoke of the "astronomical" amounts you could make and likewise the "terrible underpaying" that occurred in the industry.
The thing that almost never happened was hearing from a real working person about their real salary and explaining how they got there.
I think this could ground some students' expectations and raise others. And the ability to do this and offer a high quality analysis of how it happened, what career trajectory was needed, how you got that trajectory, how you aligned with your passions, what life principles you had that led to the outcome, etc. would make for a very interesting and more importantly useful talk that the general student population is starving for.

Your salary is nobody's business and I don't see any reason to discuss it. I don't know what your field is, but in any case you should be able to generate interest to the profession using technical accomplishments and advancements. If not, don't go there to talk; apparently you have nothing to say ...

I would not recommend you share your salary.
Instead, why do not try the approach of sharing the milestones you have achieved since graduation? Do not hide the struggles so you can empathize with your audience but also highlight why you do not regret studying at your University.
I am pretty sure you did not learn everything at the school, but some elements were key for you to be the person you are today.

Welcome to Academia.SE. I am not sure that this answers the question -- your first paragraph answers the question, but gives no justification. You then take a left turn into "general advice", which was unsolicited and is difficult to do when OP is a successful professional who knows all the details of this particular talk and we do not.

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What's the term for people who think they suffering from imposter syndrome when in reality they *are* imposters?
Many academics and students claim to be suffering from imposter syndrome. Many of these will be strong contributors regardless and I hope they find a way to cope with their self-esteem issues.
However, some of these actually will be imposters, and their feelings are appropiate and accurate indicators of their actual level of intellect and knowledge. Some of these people even claim to be suffering from imposter syndrome, when in fact their concerns are well justified.
What's a name for such people?
For example, there's a guy I know who often talks about how he has imposter syndrome because he often feels inadequate and outperformed in comparison to other students in our class. I don't know how to tell him that our class (in my experience) is wholly average and anybody who can't keep up with the level simply doesn't have the intellect/knowledge/effort required.

In general it is a mistake to characterize other individuals. Some people just struggle and don't know why. Some people need more self confidence, while others need more study. Overconfidence in your abilities can also be a problem. People are just messy in general. We have a couple hundred thousand years of muddling through.

@NajibIdrissi - at least in the US, imposter syndrome has received a lot of attention lately in academia, grad school specifically (though I'm sure you're right and other, non-academic professionals also experience it)

Echoing @NajibIdrissi: either this is a question about the English language; or it is a question whose main point seems to be to make a complaint. While I sympathise with frustration that may occur when encountering this situation, I suggest you try to formulate an explicit question about practice or norms

How about "clueless"?

I don't think there is any specific word. The people you describe are just below average or (relatively) low-achieving. I guess they could be labeled imposters, but I've never heard this used. That they claim imposter syndrome may make them delusional, but they could also just be mistaken -- it's notoriously difficult to accurately judge one's own abilities.
But, below-average students aren't necessarily imposters. Most classes have bell curves, and people on the lower half of the bell curve can still do fine work and earn their degree (and may well suffer from "imposter syndrome" if they assess their abilities far below their actual level). "True imposters" would be outliers so far below average that they should not have been admitted and are unlikely to be able to honestly earn the degree.


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I'm thinking I would like to switch labs within my department (as a grad student). How to approach this?
I am in a lab that I feel I cannot grow sufficiently in and am considering changing labs. The background is I chose to join this lab because it was aligned with the work I wanted to do, but I didn't really look into it any further since this was my first experience joining a lab.
After being in the lab for some time I've found out that communication between the labs 8 members is very limited and there aren't any group projects, assistant professor, etc. The professor is a nice person but is usually busy with other things so doesn't really give students much direction or input and leaves the students to figure pretty much everything out on their own. I'm aware this may sound great for some people, but I'm the type of person that requires more direction and to be pushed a bit more or else I tend to procrastinate. This coupled with the lab atmosphere just being very cold and not good for brainstorming with members etc has made me feel that I wont be able to grow much in this environment.
There is a similar lab in the university with more members an assistant professor, group projects and a professor that engages more with his students. I'm thinking I would like to join this lab but think my professor could take it badly since the other lab is in the same uni, and is a friend of his he will probably feel like I've slighted him, or am making an indirect comment on his skills. Which isn't really the case, I just want to be in an environment that allows me to learn as much as possible.
How should I approach this?

Honestly and directly. You are an adult human being; your current PI does not own you.  I suggest talking to your PI directly about why you are considering changing labs, as if he were also an adult human being.

This is a good and normal reason to change labs.

I strongly disagree with the few comments and answers that go after "I'm the type of person that requires more direction and to be pushed a bit more" as if it's a character flaw or that you should just buckle down and be an "adult".
I think it's commendable that you can take what seems to be an objective view of the situation and instead of saying "this lab sucks", see it as a poor fit for you.
Kudos to you! Having an inspiring advisor can be life-changing!
You know what you want and what you need. If you can find a path to getting it, go for it!

The professor is a nice person but is usually busy with other things so doesn't really give students much direction or input and leaves the students to figure pretty much everything out on their own.
I'm aware this may sound great for some people, but I'm the type of person that requires more direction and to be pushed a bit more or else I tend to procrastinate.
This coupled with the lab atmosphere just being very cold and not good for brainstorming with members etc has made me feel that I wont be able to grow much in this environment.

No doubt you are correct in your assessment. Trust your instincts.
Interaction with others, brainstorming, bouncing ideas off of each other and even general camaraderie is exactly what makes for a great research and learning graduate experience. If you can find your way towards such an environment just do it.
Don't worry about the "nice person but is usually busy with other things" they will continue to get more students and ignore them. Just don't let it be you.

As you are someone who tends to need structure and, perhaps I could even say hand-holding, and since your target advisor has a set-up that is more amenable to that style... you might be able to get some assistance from the target advisor in making the change.
You could also ask the director or dean of graduate studies in your department for assistance.
Alternatively, you could take a deep breath and let your current advisor know about the change.  Use I-messages such as "I'm the type of person that needs to be pushed a bit more or else I tend to procrastinate."  Make sure to thank the professor for the opportunity s/he provided you.

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What are some red flags that even the professors cannot help in the admission?
According to Wolfgang Bangerth's answer to Can a professor influence the graduate admissions committee if he or she is interested in a particular student?:

If a professor sends us a note that they'd like to have a student admitted and state that they will take on their adviser role, we [the adcom] will only not admit that student if there are any red flags in the file.

I want to elaborate this more. What are the red flags that he mentions?
I know that they will look at these things: the transcript, the LORs, the SOP, the GRE and TOEFL scores. What is the threshold of them? At the 50% bottom of the applications or what? Is the threshold different from top schools and low tier ones?
I have applied to a top school, to a leading professor, who says that I "would be a terrific addition" to the group. If I can avoid the red flags, how much chance that I will get an admission?

For your last question: no, there may be lots of people who "would be a terrific addition" and not all of them can be admitted.  Also, how much pull an individual professor has in the admissions process varies by department.

In addition to @Kimball 's comment, that is just polite way of responding to any candidate.

@Dexter That's why I put that phrase in quotes.

Nothing is ever 100%.   Trying to parse minuscule details to make guesses about your chances is pointless and will only stress you out.  You've submitted your application so your role in this process is done for now.  Set it aside and spend your time and mental energies thinking about something more productive.  Wait patiently for the result, and deal with it when it comes.

@Kimball but we have been discussing about our future research and fund. Is this still politeness?

I'm not saying that phrase is just meant to be polite, but it could be, or it could be sincere.  Certainly if you've been discussing research and funding that's a good sign.  I would say it sounds hopeful, but is not essentially a lock, unless a professor explicitly tells you it is.   There are a lot of factors involved, and the committee won't know who are the best candidates (at least on paper) until they look through all the applications.

What are the red flags that he mentions?

In general, a red flag is anything that makes the application look inappropriate or weak in comparison with other applications.  This is a vague term, as you've recognized.  It can mean something a little different to each committee member.  (I've been in discussions in which one committee member thought something was clearly a worrisome sign while another was completely unbothered by it.)
In practice, when you first look at a group of applications they come across like this.  There's a small group that should obviously be admitted, and a large group that don't look like good choices.  The latter are the ones with red flags.  Then there's a group that look like they could plausibly be admitted, but there are too many of them so further distinctions have to be made.  That's the group where support from a potential advisor would be most helpful.

I have applied to a top school, to a leading professor, and they says that I "would be a terrific addition" to the group. Would this mean that if I'm trying to avoid the red flags, 100% that I will get an admission?

It's completely unclear.  First of all, it depends on how the admissions committee works.  For example, it sounds like support from an advisor helps much more in Wolfgang Bangerth's department than in mine.  Without knowing where you are applying, it's impossible to say what will happen in your case.
Furthermore, who knows what this professor's statement means?  Maybe they tell lots of people that they would be terrific additions.  Maybe you're special but someone even more impressive has also applied.  It's not worth spending a lot of time trying to interpret statements like this, since you just don't have enough information to say with any confidence what they mean.

......Berkeley?

@Ooker: This will be a matter of departmental policy, rather than anything university-wide.

This answer agrees with what I see in my department.  Support from a potential adviser will help a student who is near the borderline for admission; it won't help one who, in the committee's estimation, isn't even close.

@Ooker and not only on the department, but also on the political weight of the specific professor, and on how much effort is he willing to put in to get you.

Remember, admission is competitive. Avoiding "red flags" (anything which indicates you will not be able to complete the degree respectably), you're competing against all the other applicants for a limited number of admissions. You may have a wonderful application but be just a hair below the other top applicants. There is no 100% for ordinary mortals. And even the exceptional may not get in if the school feels (for example) that this student won't be able to handle the stress of suddenly being only "typical" in the new environment.
Be the best you can be, apply everywhere you're seriously considering going, and cross your fingers.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
What ethical considerations should I be aware of when performing (and publishing) research on live insects?
I have studied different insects for my entire academic career, but I've never had to work with live specimens before. I am considering a project where I will need to capture live dragonflies and look at their wings under our SEM. However, I will likely need to remove the wings from some live specimens. For this question, assume that is my only option. Several papers might come from this project, and I'm not sure what ethical considerations would need to be addressed when preparing or submitting the manuscript.

Potentially interesting reading: World Dragonfly Association's Code of practice for collecting specimens, B. Fischer and B. M. H, Larson: Collecting insects to conserve them: a call for ethical caution, Insect Conservation and Diversity 12, 173-182 (2019), which was summarized here.

@WnGatRC456 Could you please clarify if you are asking about how to act ethically or how to demonstrate to a journal that you acted ethically; those are very different things.

@AnonymousPhysicist it is the latter.

Are you looking for regulatory principles/best practices or a discussion of ethical treatment of living organisms?

Apart from one's personal moral considerations, research studies on live animals are overseen by an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC; depending on your institution this may be part of or in the same office as an Institutional Review Board [IRB]). Organisms collected from the wild will likely require some sort of permit.
Check the rules for your institution's IACUC. Insects usually don't require special approval so you may not need to submit a plan, or you might submit one and it would be waived. (But don't listen to me, check with your IACUC.) If you're proposing pulling the wings off while the animal is alive, and the IACUC wanted to get involved, they could work with you to find ways to minimize the animals' suffering.
The approval/waiver from IACUC is what a journal will be looking at for ethical considerations.
For collecting the animals, determine where you will get them and who manages that land. You will need their permission to collect, and if the manager is a government agency, that would require some kind of permit. Try to get these submitted well in advance (like months) since those approvals move at the speed of government. You will need to state exactly what you want to collect, justify why you need to make the collection, and probably discuss mitigating factors.
If the organisms have any kind of special status, like being rare, endangered, or invasive, you might need even more permits. Check for any laws applicable to your jurisdiction.
Finally—this isn't required by as many journal as should require it, but it's still a very good idea—have a plan for how to voucher your specimens. Vouchering is a way to keep your specimens available in perpetuity so the scientific community can check and build on your work. For the dragonflies this would be an entomological museum. If you're unfamiliar with such a museum, find your nearest one and talk to the manager there about how to go about making a proper specimen (you may even be able to store the actual SEM samples with the rest of the specimen, which would be great for future work).

Dragonflies are aquatic insects.  That means here in NY I would actually need a permit from the Department of Environmental Conservation to take them here in in New York State (The fifth item in the bullet list at https://dec.ny.gov/regulatory/permits-licenses/fish-wildlife-plant/special-licenses/collect-possess-sell).  I haven't worked with insects with our UCAR, but I wouldn't be surprised if they wanted some level of oversight with how any animal is caught or procured, and subsequently husbanded, or even if they insisted upon procuring the insects themselves.

Yeah, the legalities around collecting are extremely variable, and really require awareness of all the jurisdictions claiming oversight over a particular patch of land (or water). Some journals will require documentation or an attestation that specimens were permissibly collected.

Different ethical systems will give different answers to such a question, depending on how they consider insects to have independent rights, such as a right to life or to not be injured. Even the Dalai Lama, it is said, will swat at mosquitoes, though Buddhism has a high respect for all life.
But, in the US, to convince a journal that you have acted ethically, you run your research proposal before an ethics board, such as the IRB (Institutional Review Board). They will make a determination whether what you propose is ethical or not.
That isn't a perfect solution, of course, since the members are also people, but, I'd think that the recommendations of the IRB would be "conservative" enough that few would object (not none, however). But it gives you formal permission to act that will almost certainly be accepted by a publisher.
As noted in comments, the IRB is for human subjects, but a more general ethics board might be available, even one specifically for your field.
There is ethical danger, however, in making up your own rules without some outside, independent consultation. Too many past research projects have fallen into serious difficulty when that is done.
Note that this question has been examined in the literature. A google search for "ethics of experimentation on live invertebrates" turns up a number of papers.

IRBs only deal with human subjects research.

(and many IACUCs/ACUCs only deal with vertebrate research)

@BryanKrause, thanks. Generalized it a bit.

I assume OP has training in biological sciences, since they're studying biology. It's pretty difficult in that field to escape ethics training that covers human subjects research and animal research ethics, and in particular the existence of ethical review boards to review research in those areas. Where OP is likely struggling is that they are uncertain what they should do when working with live animals not covered by these boards; if they were covered, they'd know what to do. Since they aren't covered, they don't know what to do.

Maybe an answer would be "the standard is to include a statement that your work in considered exempt from IACUC approval by your institution". Maybe authors are expected to present their own arguments in lieu of official review. I don't know what the standard is, because I don't do research with invertebrates, and I don't think you do, either.

No, I don't (well some students...) but the principle behind the answer, since I do know something about ethics, is that you are wise not to make your own determinations in such things. If a board says you are exempt you have some valid reasons for thinking you are. You don't just decide to do it. Thee are some outstanding examples of violations of that principle, as you know.

I agree, but that's just restating OP's rather tricky problem, rather than a solution.

Not to pile on, but if an ethics board doesn't normally handle invertebrates, I seriously doubt they'd be willing to give you approval or even advice about invertebrates. You could say, they don't have the spine to do so, ha ha.

@cag51 You could always just ask some donkeys whether they approve of your study, they seem prepared to offer their informed consent.

Be careful, if you ask them, you might make an ass out of yourself :-)

@BryanKrause actually my training is in engineering. My research has been in biomimetic, mostly developing mathematical or experimental models. This is the first time I am using live specimens.

One of the most bizarre things across the various ethical standards that government agencies in many countries require one to meet, is that insects are not recognized as requiring protection. Insects are invisible; they simply fall outside the purview of most country's IRBs (e.g., note for example, the scope of the Australian code, as described on page 1 of the requirements). I think it is correct to say that, in the UK, it is harder to experiment on oneself than it is to pull wings off a fly.
On a slightly different note, I appreciate your request that responders view your proposed activity as being your only option. But as with most ethical choices, there are other options ... in your case (and I am not asserting a moral imperative here, merely an option) the alternative is not to do what you a proposing.


text:
Unsure if I am the best fit to write a Recommendation Letter for a Research Internship
A promising student of mine has asked me to write them a letter of recommendation for a research internship they are applying to. I believe the student is a very good candidate for an internship, but outside of class, I have not had many significant interactions with them. That being said, they have already completed two classes where I was their instructor, and now in another course that I teach.
One of the applications specifically mentions (emphasis mine)

These letters should come from individuals who can speak to the applicant’s suitability for this program, for example a faculty member familiar with the student's academic record, or a faculty member or research lab leader who can address the student’s aptitude for research.  At least one of your letters of recommendation should come from a faculty member or MD, PhD, or MD/PhD research supervisor who can speak directly to your aptitude for research.

I mentioned to the student that since he has not done research with me that I may not be the best fit to write a letter of recommendation for him for this internship. The others do not mention this, so I do not see any problem. Is this grounds for me to decline the students request?

Are ther undergraduate research opportunities at your institution? Do you oversee any undergraduates doing research for you? Would you take them on in such a position?

There are multiple undergraduate research opportunities at the institution I teach. I currently have two undergrads working for me doing research, but this student is not one of them. Based on his class performance, I would not have any qualms with initiating a research opportunity with this student, but it's hard to say more than that. I've had students work for me in the past who did well in class, but were poor researchers.

I removed your last paragraph -- better to have one question per post, and your second question is really too broad to be a good fit here. If you have more specific questions about dos-and-donts when it comes to writing the letter itself, feel free to make a new post.

I often get requests from students in my lecture class who I have no personal relationship with. What I do is be upfront about it: Tell them that you can write a letter stating (e.g.) they did well in your class, good attendance, etc, but that a strong letter often goes beyond what people can glean from a transcript and writing sample. Still, it's often unreasonable to expect that students will develop close relationships with multiple faculty, so if they just need a letter to fill the minimum I can write one. 50% of the time I don't hear back the other 50% I write a bland but positive rec

You should be fine as a letter writer as long as the student has someone with whom they have done research who will also write for them. Not every writer needs to be a research supervisor and one or two letters attesting to the overall competence and resolve of a student should be fine.
Just be honest, in the type of contact you have had, their performance, and in your prediction of their eventual success. The last is very important. You can somewhat judge that just by thinking about the interest they have shown in the ideas you have presented to them.
If the student has no research experience, they may not be a great candidate for the position, but you can still write a supporting letter. It may be the best option they have. In particular, don't decline if they have no better (more appropriate) writer. Do what you can for them.

Correct. Not everyone has had the opportunity to do research. Everyone has a first research experience.

I'd add "ask a senior colleague" to the end of this question to handle the "Where can I go for resources on what to include?" Old PhD advisors aren't embarrassing resources for this question either, at least from my perspective.

You should write the letter.

It's the job of the people at the research internship to decide if the undergrad is a good candidate or not. Your job is to write a letter, not pre-screen their candidates.
The undergrad has to play the cards they have: if they have no research experience, then they don't have the option of asking someone to talk about that. Maybe this will kill their application, but it's possible that they have other strengths that make up for their lack of experience. Again, that's the job of the people evaluating applications, not yours.
The instructions you quote are boilerplate stuff you see on most instructions to letter writers. I've written plenty of letters for undergrads in the same position and they still get the job/internship/whatever.

The only time I refuse to write a letter is when it's a waste of time, e.g.   a C- student asking for a med school letter, or someone with no research experience applying to a high-level research job, etc. Otherwise, the job of the letter writer is to be honest.

Great advice all around. I do think it is tentatively okay to pre-screen for certain highly competitive scholarships like Goldwater or NSF GRFP if students basically have no real shot at them, but in theory those students should not be encouraged to apply to those anyway. I have seen some cases where students with 2.x GPAs were for whatever reason encouraged to apply to those types and predictably were not considered for the scholarships.

This was originally a comment that I am turning into an answer, since I think this is a pretty dangerous take on the role letter writers play. Refusing to write this letter would be a big disservice to the student, specially given their strong performance. Our role as letter writers is to attest to our students' or mentees' performance, rather than to try to manage the way they make use of it.
In this specific case, it seems like while focusing on the bold text, you're ignoring the part saying that "for example a faculty member familiar with the student's academic record". When writing recommendation letters you should ask students to send you all relevant information that may help you get a better picture of their profile to strengthen the letter. If you have done this and know the student personally as a teacher, you fully satisfy the condition above and should have no reservations writing it.
Ultimately, your role is not to micromanage the details of the student's application (whether someone else is writing as a research supervisor or not), but to provide an account of the student from your perspective. Pointing out this detail to the student is valuable, but anything more than that is not really your concern. Let the committee decide whether their application satisfies the requirements or not.

I agree with the other answers, I just want to more directly address a couple of points you made in the question.

but outside of class, I have not had many significant interactions with them

But you have had significant interactions with him during class? Significant enough to know that he is a promising student, anyway. Seems good enough to me.

he has not done research with me

The bolded criteria are met if you are "a faculty member [...] who can speak directly to [his] aptitude for research". Here's Wiktionary's definition of "aptitude":

Natural ability to acquire knowledge or skill.

The condition of being suitable.

You don't have to have direct experience of his research (if he has done any with other supervisors), what matters is whether he can learn how to do research; whether he is suitable for research. If you have seen that he has skills relevant to doing research, or skills that would be required for learning how to do research, then you can speak about those skills.
So even if you are to take the boilerplate literally, word-for-word, it seems to me you are a good fit to write this letter of recommendation.

He actually confirmed with me that he has not done research with other faculty, but that is due to him double majoring in biomed and mechanical engineering whilst being involved in sports. He has maintained a steady 3.8 GPA throughout so that speaks well of him as well.


text:
How to deal with students who submit their homework as an attachment to a completely blank e-mail?
I am responsible for the exercises for a graduate course (which happens to contain only international students). The students submit their solutions via email and all of them send a normal email: greeting me and telling that the solutions file is attached then (most of them) wishing me a good weekend as the due dates are Fridays.
One group sends me an empty email: just an attachment without any word!
I believe that this behaviour is odd, should I take an action or it is not my business?
Edit: Some have asked why I find this behavior "odd." If these students were submitting their assignments in person, I would find it strange if they just put the assignment on my desk without acknowledging me. Sending the e-mail attachment without any body text seems similarly strange to me.

Yeah Mr. White... Yeah Science! Here's my homework (bi_ch) Just kidding

Does the e-mail have anything meaningful in the Subject header?

Perhaps wherever you live the culture is different than in my country. When I was in school, it was very common for students to walk to the front of the room before or after class and drop a paper on a pile without saying anything to the instructor. Yes, they MIGHT say, "Have a nice weekend, Dr Jones" or some such. Or they might not, and no one thought anything of it.

I don't really think this is odd: they have been asked to send the assignment by email and they did.  There isn't really a need to say anything further and they didn't.  Maybe it would be slightly more courteous if they were to add a couple of words of greeting, but your job is not to be Emily Post.
If the assignments were submitted on paper, and they left their assignment in your mailbox, would you insist that they include a note wishing you a nice day?  No, that would be silly.
There isn't anything you need to do about this.

Cover letters used to be considered the norm. People still often use post it nots on things left in a mail box. That said, it should not matter.

@StrongBad: "People still often use post it nots on things left in a mail box."  True, but in my experience at least, students far more often do not.

@StrongBad Horses & Buggies, type writers and pagers used to be the norm as well... Times change, and as long as it's clear who it's from (SugarDaddy987@hotmail.com might not be a good clue, but if the name is on the paper...) then the extra "pomp" (Greetings kind sir, please see my attached...) is needed as much as a cover letter or a post it note.

I would assume that students submitting assignments would use their college email address, not something@hotmail. One thing I've learned over the years is that putting two separate messages in one email is a guarantee that one of the two will be ignored, or else the two will get mixed up. Water-cooler chit-chat when submitting an assignment is just noise. Any non-trivial message or question to the lecturer or grader should be in a different email, IMO. That said, different cultures around the world have very different ideas about what is "polite".

@alephzero: You would assume incorrectly, then.

@StrongBad Putting important information on a Post-It is silly as it can fall off. Putting unimportant information on a Post-It is... unimportant.

I consider this (answer) a reflection of the same attitude that makes professors write email replies like "Done. -J" So it is not without precedent in the academic world.

@WernerCD I wonder how many junk e-mails are gonna fill up a random person's mailbox now! (jk)

@Panzercrisis lol I guess it should have been example.com. Poor SugarDaddy :(

@StrongBad Most of the information I see placed on post-it notes in mailbox items are just explaining what needs to be done with said item (e.g. reminding the person who needs to sign the form next or who to deliver it to, etc.) Presumably, what an instructor should do with a homework assignment that they asked a student to turn in to them is obvious. :)

@reirab you mean guessing from the essay title which class, section and assignment it is and what TA it should go to. Working from the email address back to a student number and then determining if they are a graduate student or have a disability that needs to be accounted for is generally not trivial.

@StrongBad Oh, I agree that all of that information is necessary. I upvoted your answer. Most instructors I've had require all of that to be included in the e-mail header as you mentioned for assignments turned in via e-mail. For the few assignments that I turned in on paper in college, the instructors required all of that to appear somewhere on the front page (exact requirements varied a little.) I don't think I ever saw post-its used for that purpose, but that may also vary by school/instructor.

Disagree that "this is [not] odd". I think it's rude and discourteous, but agree that it's not really something that needs "dealing with".

Good point. No one would expect similar for a test or homework assignment.

"they left their assignment in your mailbox" Ah, the happy days when even writing my name on the assignments was superfluous, since the people grading them all knew my handwriting.

@StrongBad If there is vital information that needs to be given to identify the assignment, like the student name or ID number, course title, identification of which assignment this is, etc, then yes, the student needs to specify this. If not, if the instructor is just looking for "have a nice weekend", then unless this is a class in etiquette there's no reason for the instructor to do anything about students who leave such greetings out. If there is identifying information in the paper itself, then it is questionable whether this needs to be duplicated in the email.

When teaching large classes or multiple classes, it can be very helpful if the email, or even better the subject line, contains the key information about the class, section, group and assignment (and possibly TA). It should be the responsibility of the instructor to tell the students what is expected, if anything, in the syllabus and on the assignment itself. Those instructions should make penalties, if any, clear. In the absence of instructions, it is not worth saying anything.
I would be hesitant about imposing penalties mid term, but asking students to include additional information seems reasonable. Just make what you want clear.

This other answer is good, but this IMHO is better: 1. an identifying subject actually helps, 2. if you do not tell them to, they won't.

+1 for the practical aspect: maybe this is slightly weird, maybe it isn't, depends on all parties involved.  Is the OP entitled to think it is slightly weird? Sure.  But the real question is: is it weird enough to intervene by making a course policy about it?  If yes: okay, do it; students won't object.  If no: let it go.  Students -- and people in general -- can be very, very weird.  This is small time stuff.

I'd expect all of this information to be part of the subject line and not  the body (there's nothing in the OP that indicates that this isn't done). Adding stuff to the body just forces the recipient to skim quickly over it to make sure there's nothing of importance in it. Wasting everybody's time for no purpose isn't polite in my book. Keeping emails as short as possible (but not shorter!) is one of the core rules of email nettiquette.

Not having a subject does often put the email in your spam folder!

Even better a website that lets the student upload the assignment and sends them a confirmation email.

C'mon, the syllabus should not look like an ISO/IEEE norm.

@Voo Agreed, this is what EOM was invented for.

Unnecessary courtesies (like greetings) and stating the obvious (like saying that attachment is attached) only waste YOUR time and increase YOUR workload. This might not be obvious at the first sight, but if they all did same that would save YOU considerable time in total. In some company environments this is standard practice, and adding meaningless greetings is what's frowned upon (between close coworkers, like you and your students).

This is something that gets more apparent the longer your career has been going on. I'd guess in ten years you will actually prefer emails with as little content as absolutely necessary, just because this will save time on your part.

Saying the attachment is attached is useful if the receiver receives an email without attachment. In that case there's a good chance the professor would hit reply and just type "attachment missing", and the sender fixes the problem, vs. a failed assignment.

@gnasher729 Yes, of course. But pay close attention at who is benefiting from this correction code and who has to pay for this benefits. It's the student who is benefiting and the professor who has to do this work: read the mail, verify presence of the attachment, verify if the statement matches observed state, take corrective measure (reply). We're talking here about how empty body benefits the professor. Cordial greetings also benefit the student at expense of professor, as it creates more "humane" relationship which will make the professor more likely to explain instead of simply failing.

Actually, processing an empty mail costs more time for me, as I can grasp at the first glance that an e-mail contains nothing but a minimal text like "Hello, see attached assignment solution. Regards, Alice", while it usually takes me a few moments to realize and become certain that the e-mail client is not currently trying to display or load some complex e-mail content, but that the e-mail is actually empty.

Also, I agree with @gnasher729, as eventually, both involved persons benefit. The student's direct benefit is clear, but obviously, the teaching staff benefits just as much from avoiding any investigations and discussions about whether or not the assignment files were submitted. Surely, even if any attempts by students to start such a debate are completely ignored, the processing time required to recognize and dismiss any e-mails and other contact attempts invalidates any perceived gain from not having to process many brief four-line-e-mails with little complicated information.

@O.R.Mapper It's a matter of worst-case scenario vs best-case scenario. If you predict possibility of mistakes, then repeating same information twice or thrice certainly provide beneficial error-correction. On the other hand, if you assume no mistakes, then any repetitions are superfluous. I stand on position that it's sender's responsibility to proof-read his/her mails before sending, not recipient's to perform error checking.

@Agent_L: Of course, but if the sender fails to do so, it will still be the recipient who will suffer.

@O.R.Mapper We've sidetracked way too far. 1) the topic explains the purpose of the email. 2) The recipient may or may not reply and investigate the issue, that's his/her choice and this is the moment where he/she chose to suffer. It doesn't really matter if the reply is "you've forgotten to attach your homework" or "why have you sent me an empty mail". You've assumed that recipient must help identify the problem sender encountered - that's not the case.

@Agent_L: The suffering is involuntary and comes from having to process, recognize and dismiss all the e-mails, calls, visits and whatnot by the student who asks why they got 0 points and insists they had their submission ready in time.

@O.R.Mapper I've already answered to that: you may simply reply "wtf?" to a wtf mail. You don't have to investigate the reasons the mail is unintelligible. I know that nice people tend to feel obligated to do so. But it's your feeling, nothing more.

@Agent_L: If a student claims I have errouneously ignored their submission, then that is not a "wtf mail", but a possibly legitimate complaint, and it is my duty to at least investigate whether that allegation is true. This has nothing to do with just "being nice". That investigation alone may take a multiple of the effort required to skim over many mails with very few, relatively unsurprising lines of text. To summarize: You don't gain anything by asking for empty e-mail bodies; any perceived gain by reducing text to read is compensated for by the confusion this lack of information stirs up.

Asking students to give an email subject or body like, "Chapter 4 homework, Fred Smith" is reasonable. If the assumption is that the homework will be attached, then there's no need to say "attached", but okay, if it makes you feel better. If that's what the instructor wants, he should tell the students, and then if they don't comply, he has reasonable grounds to say "sorry, but your homework was not properly submitted". He shouldn't shouldn't just assume that students will know just what their emails should look like if he doesn't say. But in any case, the complaint here was not that he ...

... couldn't identify the emails, but that the students failed to wish him a nice day. Such pleasantries do nothing to identify the assignment. They'd distract from it by adding clutter. Now he has to sort through platitudes to find the actual content.

@Jay: OP was not complaining that the other students failed to wish him a nice day, but rather that they did not write anything at all in their E-mail.

You may want to be more forthcoming as to your expectations - if you want text, ask for it. Have a sub section on the homework policy in the syllabus explain that each e-mail should contain the students full name, the class that they are e-mailing you about, the section, etc. such that you can search for the assignments when you grade them, and that any e-mails missing/lacking the information won't be graded and thus the students will receive a zero on the assignment.

Have a sub section on the homework policy in the syllabus explain that each e-mail should contain the students full name, the class that they are e-mailing you about, the section, etc. — Don't forget the compulsory wishes for having a great weekend! :^)

hahaha. this is the best answer by far. if teachers expect something out of the ordinary from their students, they should indeed specify it on their syllabus.

... and given that 'ordinary' clearly is subjective here, I would just say "if teachers expect specific information they should state it very clearly and/or provide a template and/or examples.  Otherwise everyone will make their best guess".

I disagree with the other answers. "Hello" and "thank you" are banned from SE sites for reasons of efficiency, but it is far from the norm on Internet. Look at newcomers' first questions for example.
If the assignment had to be submitted in my office, I would be upset if the students were opening the door, dropping the paper on my desk and leaving without a word.
Why emails should be different? Email between students and professors is a formal way of communication (how many questions about ethics and protocol for emails to professors do we have on this site?) and (non superfluous) politeness never hurt.
As for what to answer to students, it is up to you:

You could ignore it
You could tell them you personally found it was a lack of politeness and respect to you.
You could tell them that, although they didn't mean to be impolite and just tried to save time, it may hurt them in later communications. Not spending two minutes to be polite and clearly identify their work (the name of their file may not be as clear as they think - I regularly receive assignments named "Math Homework" by "lovelyflower@gmail.com") may be interpreted as a lack of involvement in the project/class.

'"Hello" and "thank you" are banned from SE sites for reasons of efficiency' - that's only half the story; the other half is that SE is meant to be a collection of questions and answers directed to the public, not a discussion board with personal communication from one user to another user. An e-mail, on the other hand, pretty much is communication from one user to another.

How would you tell the students that you think it's impolite? "I think it's impolite for you to drop off your homework without wishing me a happy weekend." Just to state that sounds silly and petty. What next? "Any student who fails to send me a birthday card will be given a failing grade"?

@Jay: Very simple and natural: "I think it's impolite for you to drop off your homework without saying a single word."

If students dropped off their homework on your desk at the end of class, I wouldn't consider it rude if they all just walked up and dropped their papers in a pile without saying anything. Would you expect each student to stop and chat? "So, how's your family? Hope you have a nice day", etc? If someone came to your office to drop off homework and you were talking to someone else, it would be rude for them to interrupt; I'd expect them to just drop the paper and leave. Sure if someone came to your office and you were sitting at your desk grading papers or whatever, I'd expect the student to ...

... say something like, "Just dropping off my homework, Dr Jones". If you weren't there and there was some sort of box for papers, I wouldn't expect the student to add a note, "This is my homework"? Well, obviously, right? "Have a nice day"? Rather superfluous.

When assignments were to be submitted at my office I would leave an envelope pinned to the cork board and expect people to just drop it in there without me ever having noticed them... so the opposite of what you've described.

@Jay: Most of your examples rely on contrived preconditions that were not mentioned by the OP ("all" students dropping off homework "at the end of class"; students coming "to your office" while you are "talking to someone else"; ...). The only one that seems to match what the OP describes is "if someone came to your office and you were sitting at your desk", in which case you admit yourself it would be weird not to say anything. ...

@Jay: ... (And with that said, even if A and B are talking and C enters to drop off homework, in my opinion it would be very natural if A and C exchanged a quick glance and nod (as if to say "I'll leave this here." - "Thank you.") rather than A and C acting as if the other one didn't exist.)

@O.R.Mapper Absolutely. But C wouldn't interrupt the conversation between A and B to say, "So, how are you today? Did you have a nice weekend?" etc before concluding, "Well, I just dropped by to give you my homework." But what's the equivalent of a nod and pointing at a paper in an email? Maybe "homework attached"? That would be about it. The existence of the email is probably indication enough.

Wishing you a good weekend, while perhaps courteous, is also superfluous. However I can see why there might be legitimate reasons for wanting something meaningful in the email body and subject, in addition to the attachment. It would help with sorting and filing emails for example, and empty emails are also more likely to be flagged by spam filters.
I would suggest you make it clear to the students that you require some basic information in the email subject, and body, including student number, course and assignment title etc. Greetings and salutations shouldn't be necessary though.
If an attachment was corrupted in transit for example, or was in an unusable document type, having the basic relevant data in the email body would help to resolve this.

It should be added that automated processing is not unusual now a days. If I am asked to send a specific file, with a specific format, and specific name, to a specific email, it is not far fetched for me to believe that there is a script on the other end which 'processes' the attachment, but ignores the body of the message (uploading it somewhere or sorting it into a folder to view later). Even something as simple as having email rules setup could cause the body to go ignored until a human has to read/grade them. Therefore, it is not unreasonable for students to forgo formal letter formats in a world where a lot of things are automated anyways.
Furthermore, even if there was no automation, some teachers may be trained to see emails with attachments as 'the homework' and ignore it, until they actually grade it. As a result if students included comments or questions, they would go largely unanswered/ignored, and they subsequently would be trained to make it clear when they have questions/comments, and not include those in the 'homework attachment' email, as those dont get adequate responses.
That said, in this case its likely most students probably think the file name is adequate enough to indicate the contents. I.e. if the title says "Homework_Assignment_4 -- Michael_Jones" no other explanation is necessary.

There's an old system administrators' maxim, "Be conservative in what you generate and liberal in what you accept."
It might be thoughtful to add a few polite notes, but just sending the requested homework should be tolerated, too.
I'm working on a technical book now, and my publisher has established certain expectations regarding email, including that email subjects will be rather formulaic (with an identifying string for my specific title, a chapter number, a revision number if appropriate, and "WIP" if I have to submit a work in progress). And both they and I try to add a few words of politeness, but this is not a formal expectation.
I think it's nice that students wish you a happy weekend, but if your biggest problem with your class is that one student is emailing you assignments without niceties, you're doing well.

Going a bit off-topic here, but Postel's principle can actually be a terrible idea and the cause of many problems when if comes to standards: you get two implementations tolerating their own deviations from the spec, another ones implements it rigorously, but doesn't work and has to guess what to do in all the possible wrong cases sent by the other implementations.

Definitely this group has more common sense and familiarity with the use of email than most of your students.
First of all, if you have a preference for a given format, information included in subject line or in the text, you should say so. Students are coming from different places, they cannot just figure out of your expectations or preferences.
Second, emails are not letters. The common way of professional emails is similar how the said group used it: brief, contains only necessary information. Most text on professional writing clearly discourage all kind of "Dear XY", "Best regards" and similar. Wishing you good weekend of rehearsing that the attachment is an attachment, and indeed it is what you think is rather unnecessary.
Off course you can have a personal taste different, and you can ask your students to accommodate, but don't expect that your rules are universal or known automatically by everyone.
To answer comments:
Indeed, empty mails are a little extreme. However the closes format to an assignment submission is a memo, and memos does not contain salutation, greetings, or any superfluous "best regards", "is your dog happy?" etc or signature. In other words, memos does not contain anything that OP is explicitly missing.
If one has other preferences, she/he is free to write a guideline or communicate that. For example a page like this: http://faculty.mccombs.utexas.edu/kristie.loescher/assignments/memotips.htm
Comment along the line with Nate's answer, and using his example:
Just for the sake, imagine a similar homework assignment on paper. Do you expect a printed letter like "If it would be a homework assignment, no one would expect an extended intro with "Dear Sir, How was your weekend? I hope you are in good health and enjoy the chirping birds of the Spring. Let me introduce you my solution for the first problem you kingly asked us to solve:" with a big "Should there be any question feel free to contact me. Sincerely, (huge, hand written signature)" at the end? Would you frown upon students who are listing only the answers, no greetings, no salutation as unprofessional and rude behavior because they do not follow standard letter formats (or what you think standard)?

Downvoted for the blanket claim "Second, emails are not letters." In general, e-mails very much are (the digital equivalent of) letters. The differences are the medium and the transfer mode, not how we fill them with content. Now, it is conceivable that in some cultures on this planet, specific ways adapted to particular contexts have locally overridden the general way to write letters, but then, that needs to be specified.

-1.  In my opinion and experience, an e-mail saying "Dear X,  Here is homework set N.  Regards, Y" would be considered, if anything, more professional than an empty e-mail.  Sure, this courtesy might be skipped in certain workplaces for the sake of efficiency, but to say that it is unprofessional and lacks common sense to include it seems bizarre to me.

The guidelines you link to recommend to start e-mails with a salutation and end them with a courteous closing line and your name. I cannot see any indication that e-mails are supposed to be written like "memos" (even in cultures and contexts where that latter specific type of document exists).

@O.R.Mapper The guideline is an example to OP if he wants to communicate better what he likes. I didn't say it is a authoritative guideline on a given genre, or that it supports my opinion what are best practices.

@O.R.Mapper I think he meant, "Emails are not PERSONAL letters". Yes, if I write a letter -- or email -- to my girlfriend, I might say things like "how was your weekend" and "you looked really hot in that green dress last night". I'd be unlikely to say such things in a communication to my boss.

@Jay: Where did the OP suggest students should compliment them on a green dress? Other than that, I am extremely likely to say "Have a nice weekend" to my boss (or to any other co-worker who I am in touch with briefly before the weekend, for that matter). So, what's your point?

@O.R.Mapper He said he was upset because the students did not wish him a happy weekend or similar greetings. My point was that such greetings are routinely included in personal letters, but not in business communications. Sure, you might say hello to a co-worker whom you meet in person, but -- at least in my experience -- it is VERY rare for a business memo to include greetings or well-wishing. They just get to the matter at hand. The bit about the green dress was hyperbole, of course.

If there is some information you need in the email to properly identify it or otherwise to help you sort through your emails, you should tell the students what this is. Like it would be reasonable to say that the subject line or the body of the email should specify the title of the class, the name of the student, and an identification of the assignment, perhaps something like "Chapter 4 questions". I can certainly see saying that you want this in some specified, standard format, so that you can quickly sort through emails and figure out what's what.
But to complain that they didn't wish you a happy weekend ... I suppose it's nice if teacher and students are on friendly terms and exchange such greetings, but if they don't, so what? Are your feelings deeply hurt because a student didn't say "have a nice weekend, Mr M" as he walked out the door? If so, I think you really just need to get over it.
It would be grossly unfair to penalize students for failing to live up to an expectation that you never stated.

"But to complain that they didn't wish you a happy weekend" - That is not what is stated in the question. I can only find wishing a good weekend as an actual example of a non-empty e-mail there, not as a concrete requirement. @MM may want to clarify, though, whether or not that is actually meant.

@O.R.Mapper of course I do not mean that greeting me is a concrete requirement. What I mean is exactly as you explained: "....wishing a good weekend as an actual example of a non-empty e-mail there, not as a concrete requirement."

Okay, not necessarily "have a nice weekend". What then? As I said, if there's some question about identifying the attachment assignment, sure. But you seem to be saying that you demand that students say, not necessarily "have a nice weekend", but some "polite greeting", right? Maybe, "hope you are well" or "how's your family". I don't know where you live, maybe your culture is different. But here in the U.S., business and educational communications do not normally include such pleasantries unless the people actually know each other and are friends.

Our world is a "behavioral thing" We are all becoming the reasons of some behavior. We can't say for sure, which behavior or which events have led to such situation with your students- and it could be the result of previous matters, which even don't depend on you. Anyway, you've got it and you want to change it. Very simple solution: You can tell to your students that your email internet filters dont allow you to receive empty emails, as well as emails with rudy content. After that- you can start checking only those which are not empty and those which don't have rude content. Belive me- their behavior will change very quickly. Cheerz

You shouldn't lie to your students. And it will be incredibly obvious that you are if this email is sent in reply to the email they sent.

It is not a lie especially if you configure your mail filter

It is a lie, because the professor clearly did receive the email.  Moreover, you should not try to 'shape' your students behavior through duplicitous manipulation anyway.  And you should definitely not reject a project submission just because it hasn't got anything in the email body.  Especially a group project, which would penalize all the other students in that group, not just the individual who submitted it.

@Zibbobz for group projects, I give the expectation that all group members need to be CCed in the submission, such that if a member does not receive the CCed version, they don't assume anything and submit their own.

Now that's what I call flexible morals. I'm somewhat impressed I must say - not many people would publicly admit to lying to their students just to get whatever superfluous behavioral change they want.

I would have no problem with a professor saying they wanted all e-mails to have a subject line. I would have no respect for a professor who blatantly lied to me rather than simply stating what they wanted.