How much detail to go into when discussing faculty in an application?

[hochen]

I'm in the middle of applying to the USC graduate school of SPPD for their MPA program and I have a question about the portion of the application that asks for past/future research and faculty that you want to work with. In my personal statement, I've discussed one professor that I would like to work with because he has done significant research in my field of interest (non-profit management/economics) and I was able to locate/read one of his papers online. However, there is a section of the online application it specifically asks for me to discuss faculty and past/future research I've conducted with an extensive word limit (about 1000 I believe). Unfortunately, I wasn't too involved with research during my undergraduate studies, I've never met/have been able to locate much of the research published by the faculty, and it's been a year since I've graduated so I don't have too much to write about in these sections. I was just wondering if it would hurt my application if I wrote a few sentences discussing topics I hope to research and professors I hope to work with based on their general fields of study rather than going into specific details that I don't have ATM.

Thanks for your help