Research interests too well defined?

[KingGeedorah]

Applying for Chem Ph.D. programs. One of the most common pieces of advice I hear about picking schools to apply to is that you should pick schools where there are at least three advisers you would be willing to work with. My problem is, I feel like I have figured out what I want to do and defined it pretty well, and so most every school I look at I am lucky if there are two advisers I would be willing to work for. To put it in perspective, I want to do computational research, more specifically in the quantum chem branch, and something with energy applications (batteries, solar cells, etc.). Most schools tend to have a smaller group of theorists than other branches, let alone about half of them do molecular mechanics, and then typically somewhere around half of the QM researchers do something bio related. By the time this is all factored in, nearly every school I am looking at typically only has one faculty I want to work with, and maybe one or two others I can force myself into thinking would be okay, so really I most likely wouldn't really want to work with them at all. Am I being too particular? Should I open myself up to the possibility of more? I know most graduate students' interests evolve through graduate school anyway. Is this really such a bad thing or could it also be a good thing in that I have a really good idea of what I want to do already? Given that there tend to be fewer computational faculty, is this a common issue for prospective grad students interested in computational and theoretical? Any advice, comments, anecdotes, etc. welcome.

[Cookie]

I'm in second year (3rd semester) of Theoretical Chemistry PhD in quantum dynamics. Your research interests to me are pretty vague Most of the top 50 schools will give you +2 choices of POI. Can you elaborate more about "something with energy applications"? Do you want to do high-level theory to get more accurate excited states, or dynamics, or both?  Do you want to do hard-core theory development or just application-based? Imho, when you actually elaborate your interests more, you will see that there are many QM problems and many approaches to these problems. Thinking about it, QM research in electron transfer of biosystems is also related to energy applications

[SarshTheAwesome]

I completely understand this.  I want to do neurochemistry focused on psychological disorders. I'm lucky if I find 1 professor at best per university through the chem department. I would suggest emailing the professors you are interested in and asking if they will be accepting more students. Personally, I've decided that I am only applying to schools that have that very specific interest, even if its just one professor.