<p>When writing your personal statement, is it better to indicate a general research interest, one that is relevant to the research of 5 or 6 faculty members, OR a very specific one, that can be correlated to only one professor, and possible specify him/her by name? In the first case, you might end up looking less focused but in the second, you risk not being accepted if this POI is not taking students or if many other applicants are interested in the same professor. I'm an international applicant from a developing country in North Africa, so i thought that since i'm not the most stellar applicant, there is no need to be very specific in my SOPs. Could this be detrimental to my applications?</p>
<p>I think you would want to be as specific as possible. If you didn't have a specific goal or focus in mind, why would you apply to graduate school? A friend told me that the main reason some people flame out of graduate school is because they did not have a specific focus and just kind of meandered around.</p>
<p>I respectfully disagree with Guest on this point. Do you really think that you have your career directions figured out before grad school? They say that you don't really specialize until postdoc anyway. By all means, be clear about your interests eg. I am interested in bacterial pathogenesis, but you needn't spell out which single lab you are most interested in eg. I didn't say I like gram negative host pathogen interactions. I think that a flexibility will be required of you in your career and grad school is a good step in that.</p>