Need advice on how to pitch myself during interview weekend

[Supe]

I applied to a school because they have a fantastic overall program but one of the things I struggled with even during the application was the fact that I didn't see a very obvious match in interests. I didn't expect the application to move forward because of that very reason but I got invited to their interview weekend, which will held in two weeks. I listed the faculty of interest for the interview (rather than the other way round) which confused me even more (really curious about who reviewed my application, and why they might  consider me as contender for admission to their lab). 

In all of my other interviews, the POI and I had a perfect match in interests, so those interviews had been much easier to navigate. That said, this is a great program with stellar faculty, and I want to be able to give this my best shot! The faculty that I listed for interviews have been doing work that is adjacent to my current research interests, so when discussing my research work and aspirations, should I stick to what I've been doing so far (and how I would like to build upon that with their mentorship and expertise), or should I be a bit less concrete and more open to completely new topics? What would be seen as more promising? Since I had to select the faculty for interviews, it is evident that I would need to convince them that I would be a good fit in their research groups; however, would it be reasonable to assume that they would be interested in my research interests as well?  (I ask this because the research foci/methodologies in my field tend to be very specific to faculty/groups in my field, and again there isn't a very obvious match in interests). 

I'm really confused about how to pitch myself, and would really appreciate any advice on this! Thanks in advance!

 

 

[CafeConGabi]

Congratulations on making it this far! Not too many of us do. : ) 

This sounds super exciting and stressful at the same time. I saw a video a bit ago on interviews by Lillian-AlphaGenesis. It's a lengthy video but it goes in depth about making conversation with faculty. I think the big take-away is to be open and personable. The faculty may not have the same interests but y'all are still researchers/scholars with, hopefully, the goal of adding to human knowledge. That could totally be a point of departure.