Applying for pulmonary medicine summer program when I want to do allergy?

[Lannister]

I'm applying for a program that focuses on "respiratory research" this summer. It has a list of PIs that we can choose to be our mentors, and my PI (a pediatric allergist who does research on eosinophilic disorders) is on there. So obviously since my PI is one of the pre-selected mentors, I want to apply.

However...allergy & immunology is obviously not the same thing as pulmonology. And nowhere on the website's description of the program does it mention anything about allergy. Obviously eosinophilic disorders are "allergic disorders" that frequently affect the lungs, so I have no worries that my project is related to respiratory medicine. It's just that we have to write this personal statement about why we want to do the program, and mine is mostly explaining why I want to go into allergy and immunology. But now I'm thinking this might look weird, since obviously this program is more geared towards pulmonology.

Any thoughts? I'm afraid I'm going to be auto-rejected for saying I want to go into allergy rather than pulmonology. Does allergy count as respiratory medicine? I'm just not sure why my PI would be on the list if it didn't.

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[mvenus929]

In my experience, AI and Pulm overlap a lot, especially with asthmatics. Who we refer a patient to depends on if they are otherwise atopic (eczema, food allergies, allergic rhinitis, etc) or if they just have straight-forward asthma.

I would make your personal statement a little more generalizable--rather than saying 'oh, yeah, I want to do AI for lyfe, man!', say that you find the allergic component of lung disease interesting.