Listing Research Interests

<p>This is sort of a silly question but in some apps, where they ask you to list professors whose labs you are interested in and they give you X number of spots for it, you should try to fill up all the spots right? I have enough labs at schools I'm applying to, to fill out all the spots but I just wanted to make sure that filling all of them out won't make you look too unfocused in all your research interests especially if the labs I pick are in sort of similar areas.</p>

<p>I don't see why you wouldn't fill up all the spots! You won't really know who you want to work with until you actually meet them and spend sometime in their lab so it's good to have as many choices as possible in case your first few choices aren't a good fit.</p>

<p>I didn't even think of this. I picked my top 5 favorites from each school. I figured that if there were funding problems, retirement occurring soon or something else. I would just cut them off the potential rotation list.</p>

<p>I'm wondering if mentioning 3 professors/labs that I am interested in for each school is enough?</p>

<p>In my opinion, you should list the number of people you're interested in working with at that school -- it's okay if that number is a lot or a few.</p>

<p>I doubt that the actual number of research interests is taken into account for admission purposes, this information is handy when it comes to interviews.</p>