propapanda

Thanks for your reply! It feels really disappointing to limit my list of POIs to one department, as you are doing, but perhaps it's the only choice. I know some schools are fairly open to PhD students working in labs in another department--ie, you can go to a lab's webpage and see that the students come from a variety of disciplines. I will certainly will contact the specific departments about this.

Hi all, I'm a little confused about what department to apply for--my research interests are fairly interdisciplinary (somewhere between materials science, chemistry and electrical engineering). As a result, my POI lists for schools often cover 2~3 departments (this is less of a problem at schools that are generous with their joint appointments). I'd like to do my PhD in the same department as my undergraduate study (materials science), but does that mean I'm limited to mentioning materials science POIs in my SoP? Would it be really bad if I mentioned a POI from electrical engineering (who does materials research, but doesn't have a joint appointment) in my application for a materials science graduate program? Or maybe I should just apply for the department of my main POI/the department with the most POIs I'm interested in? Thanks in advance!