<p>Are college seniors really expected to have a thorough knowledge of their own research interests before they apply for graduate fellowships and schools? Or, is it expected that students will generally know their field of study but will probably change their particular field of interest?</p>
<p>You need to at least know your sub-field of interest. For instance, you can't just be interested in MechE, but you have to know if you want to do solid mechanics or robotics or fluids (or a number of other things). It is a plus though if you know exactly what your interests are though.</p>
<p>it depends on the field. for example, if you are applying for psychology programs, you cant just say you want to study depression. you need to specify something like interactions between depressed mothers and their children.</p>
<p>For literature, which no one studies on this site (apparently) one has to know the Century as well as the main emphasis of the Century they would care to study. Like Biblical topography in the collected works of William Blake and how that applies to something or other of the whatnot of the long 18th Century.</p>
<p>I figure that when you are a senior, you could feel things out by conversing with professors.</p>
<p>You should have some specific ideas (subfields at least) for application purposes, but yes, graduate schools do expect that your interests will be flexible and subject to change. If you are too vague it won't look good (demonstrating a lack of focus or shallow understanding of your field), but while you want to be specific, you also need to show that you are open to other possibilities, otherwise you'll be demonstrating a lack of interests.</p>
<p>ender,</p>
<p>What are you interested in?</p>
<p>i heard that when you apply, you shouldn't narrow yourself to anything particular? Does anyone know how true this is?</p>
<p>I wonder if the OP is interested in Orson Scott Card.</p>
<p>Tehee, yeah, OSC rules.</p>
<p>Anyway, though, right now I'm an Aerospace Engineering major (I'm also getting an honors liberal arts degree). My research interests are all over the place. I'm going into my third year, so I need to pick a thesis soon (an undergraduate one, naturally) and it's kind of a problem to be so all over the place! Some days, I want to be a materials scientist, other days I want to get the Caltech PhD in Control and Dynamical Systems, and sometimes I want to be a planetary scientist. </p>
<p>And then somedays I actually want to be an aerospace engineer.</p>
<p>I'm thinking that maybe I'll need to take a fifth year to figure things out, particularly if I'm considering planetary science (most planetary science programs require the Physics GRE, and I don't know very much modern physics right now). Ugh... So... Conflicted...</p>