Picking which faculty to meet with

[Laniel]

I've been invited to open house weekend at a great program that I'm really interested in.  We just got our itineraries and instead of scheduling our faculty meetings for us, we are asked to pick which faculty we want to meet with and schedule times with them individually.  I've already met with my POI multiple times, plus she is on the admissions committee, so I know I'm going to meet with her, but what about everyone else?  There's really only one other faculty member who's interests match mine.  I feel like I'll come off as aloof if I only meet with one faculty member outside of the admissions committee.  On the other hand, if I ask for meetings with other people, I don't know what we would talk about.  Their research is interesting, but doesn't really have much to do with what I want to do and I'm not sure I would ask very insightful questions about it.  

 

Thoughts?

[hahaha1234]

My suggestion is that you can probably pick faculty who you may potentially want to collaborate with if you are attending the program or if they have recently published any work you find interesting and want to express your interests? you can also share your personal experience that relates to their research interests, which may lead to interesting discussions! For example, given that you are applying for linguistics, maybe something like difficulties you've encountered and saw others encounter while learning languages and share your experience overcoming these difficulties? (Sorry for not being familiar with your field if this is not a good example)

On the other, I think they understand that they are not your primary so they don't really expect you to know very much about their work. Common questions they may ask might include your previous research experience, why their program, and what do you hope to do as a grad and post-grad. I think a rule-of-thumb when talking to faculty other than your POI(s) is to show your genuine interests in the program and that you are ready to be a grad student!

Hope it helps!

[rising_star]

You're going to need a committee of 3-5 people for your dissertation so, who would the other 1-3 people besides the two you already know? Those are the people you should also ask to meet with to start gauging now whether you truly want to work with them for several years.

[TakeruK]

You should always meet with as many people as you can. I would encourage all new students to be a little open minded and always be interested in different types of work. It's important to be a little nimble/flexible because you never know what could happen in the future (your top choice advisor could leave, retire, quit, run out of funding etc.). Although ultimately, the goal of the PhD is to become the expert in a very specialized thing, it is always important to be continually learning about other research topics too. 

I also think meeting profs outside of your main research interest is a great thing because you don't have the pressure of "I must convince this person to take me as a student" and you can talk about your field in general and what interests you. Think about it as an opportunity to learn about a new research topic / area of research in your field. Usually you have to learn about these new areas through coursework or a literature review, but here's a chance to get an introduction right from the mouths of an expert!