Answering "Name professors you're interested in working with"

[renrenxi]

As I'm pre-writing secondaries, this is an important question that keeps coming up for some schools--naming faculty you'd like to work with.

Is it really so simple? Just name the area of interest (which flows with my essays) and then pick faculty?

Or do I have to be more detailed?

Pages with faculty do a better job of naming faculty rather than showing activity. And naming inactive faculty is, I've heard, a red flag. Will a simple pubmed cross-reference suffice? Or is there more I can do to make sure they have active grants?

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[Fencer]

Examine the lab websites of mentors and the mentors of students currently in the program. If your list only has the famous professors (i.e.: Nobel, HHMI, etc), it is a negative. Ideally, you say I am interested in cell signaling in cancer and choose 3-5 people actively researching, with R01s and current students.

 

[renrenxi]

Got it, thank you Fencer!