not a research fit

[printscreen]

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There is a professor whose work I am interested in and seems like a genuinely good person (don't ask how I know, I'm too paranoid to share 🙂

However, their research is on a topic I have NO experience with. I have done research with a population that is "next door" to that topic, but I have not even a little bit of direct experience with it.

Should I bother?

 

[Pragma]

There is a professor whose work I am interested in and seems like a genuinely good person (don't ask how I know, I'm too paranoid to share 🙂

However, their research is on a topic I have NO experience with. I have done research with a population that is "next door" to that topic, but I have not even a little bit of direct experience with it.

Should I bother?

What's the context? If it is grad school admissions, why not? Nothing to lose and "next door" is better than many applicants, I am sure. It really depends what you are interested in, and it helps if you have some way of knowing they are good to work with.

 

[psychRA]

How "next door" are the topics? Without knowing what they are (and I'm not asking you to divulge that!), my guess is that you may still be able to spin this in a positive way if it's a topic that you'd genuinely be interested in studying. For example, if your work is in adolescent depression, that may have sparked an interest in learning more about suicide prevention in adults. I wouldn't suggest applying to a bunch of programs where it's not an ideal match, just because it's probably not a good use of your time, effort, and $, but if your interests are reasonably close to theirs, I think it's worth taking a shot on this one.

You may want to think about how competitive the program is, and how established the professor is within his/her field. A professor who gets 100 applications for their lab may be choosier about taking a student who is an exact research match, while a newer professor may be more flexible about research interests.

 

[roubs]

There is a professor whose work I am interested in and seems like a genuinely good person (don't ask how I know, I'm too paranoid to share 🙂

However, their research is on a topic I have NO experience with. I have done research with a population that is "next door" to that topic, but I have not even a little bit of direct experience with it.

Should I bother?

Yes. Highlight how you have experience in area X but want to transition to nearby area Y.

 

[printscreen]

All right. Ok. I guess I'll try and crash the party! 😛

 

[missentity]

There is a professor whose work I am interested in and seems like a genuinely good person (don't ask how I know, I'm too paranoid to share 🙂

However, their research is on a topic I have NO experience with. I have done research with a population that is "next door" to that topic, but I have not even a little bit of direct experience with it.

Should I bother?

I actually had a very similar question to this. My example is that at one school I'm looking into there's a professor who does a lot of fMRI research in a topic I am very interested in. However, I have no fMRI experience.

I don't want to hyjack the discussion though so if printscreen's issue is totally different from mine, he/she should post and be helped first for fairness' sake. 😎

 

[szymk1sm]

I actually had a very similar question to this. My example is that at one school I'm looking into there's a professor who does a lot of fMRI research in a topic I am very interested in. However, I have no fMRI experience.

I don't want to hyjack the discussion though so if printscreen's issue is totally different from mine, he/she should post and be helped first for fairness' sake. 😎

I don't think it would a hard stretch to integrate their fMRI research with your research interest. For example, if you're interested in depression throughout the lifespan and their research is on white matter hyperintensities in geriatric depression, you could say something along the lines of "I"m interested in researching age-differences in depressive symptomology and correlating that with structural and functional imaging." Maybe explain how you don't have experience with fMRI but that you're interested in their work, have these types of experiences, and want to develop those [fMRI] skills.

I had zero experience with fMRI when I entered grad school in August. Since then, I've been learning how to run the fMRI scans with a fellow grad student and have learned how to preprocess the data.

It is possible, you just have to convey how your interests coincide with their research program.