I got into a good ortho program by touting my trauma research. Some people in my program are expecting me to continue doing trauma research. But my intention all along has been to go into spine. Should I pick up a trauma research project first, work on it, and then move to spine? I'd prefer to just go find a spine project first and forget about the trauma stuff, but I'm afraid of pissing people off. Any advice?

can i ask what kind of research that you did that seemed to be significant enough for you to justify your acceptance into an ortho program? Thanks

It's all about the pubs, regardless of specialty. When I applied, I had a first author pub dealing with ortho trauma, and two other pubs (fourth and fifth author) in a field outside ortho. Lots of conference abstracts, too.