Potential supervisor contacts before I receive my admission status

[dimpleangel]

So I don't know if anyone has been in this situation. I really want to go to this school and I tried contacted a few potential supervisors a month before the deadline but they were all too busy to reply me. Anyway, now the deadline passed and as I'm still waiting for the replies from the admission office, a professor ( probably one of the highest ranking prof in that university) directly contacted me and asked me if I was interested in joining his research group.

The thing is I'm not really interested in his research, but if I say no now, that might have a detrimental impact on my admission(??) Or if I pretend to say I'm interested and back out later, would that affect my future career as a graduate student ( assuming that I will be accepted later on....)

Please give me your advice or suggestions of what I should do. Or should I wait for another week to see if any profs that I emailed reply me back? And does the fact that prof emailed me mean I was already accepted??? ( well even if I 'm already accepted, I don't want them to rescind my admission if my refusal/lack of interest pisses that prof off.

Thank you so much in advance!!!!

[franks98]

So I don't know if anyone has been in this situation. I really want to go to this school and I tried contacted a few potential supervisors a month before the deadline but they were all too busy to reply me. Anyway, now the deadline passed and as I'm still waiting for the replies from the admission office, a professor ( probably one of the highest ranking prof in that university) directly contacted me and asked me if I was interested in joining his research group.

The thing is I'm not really interested in his research, but if I say no now, that might have a detrimental impact on my admission(??) Or if I pretend to say I'm interested and back out later, would that affect my future career as a graduate student ( assuming that I will be accepted later on....)

Please give me your advice or suggestions of what I should do. Or should I wait for another week to see if any profs that I emailed reply me back? And does the fact that prof emailed me mean I was already accepted??? ( well even if I 'm already accepted, I don't want them to rescind my admission if my refusal/lack of interest pisses that prof off.

Thank you so much in advance!!!!

Personally, I'd take it, especially if you really are set on that university. I would tell him that you'd love to work on his research but that you also want to work on X, Y, and Z and want to make sure that you'd be able to pursue that as well, on your own time or with other profs...

[LJK]

I would straightforwardly ask 'Why me?' Presumably your SOP identified other professors and other research that you thought was a good match. This professor is seeing something different. Probe into why he thinks you would make a good addition to his lab - maybe there is a new project going in a new direction, or he needs some skills you already have and would not need to be trained on. Rather than dismiss this opportunity outright, start a dialogue, get more information and think about whether you could be happy there in that lab (at least to start).

[dimpleangel]

The prof is known to be a very nice guy but his research is totally out of my league. Presumably he looked at my application and since I have some experience with anal. chem he thought I might be a good addition to his lab.

Now I will follow franks98's advice and let the prof know about my interest in his research but do insist that I would love to work in other areas if opportunities come up.

I'll let you guys know how things turn out. Thank you again:)

[The Dudester]

I have some experience with anal. chem

What an unfortunate abbreviation.

[dimpleangel]

<br>What an unfortunate abbreviation.<br>

<br><br>My thought exactly when I was looking at publications and stuffs Lol<br> Edited March 9, 2011 by dimpleangel