interview with professor with no interest overlap

[highkick]

Hello all,

I just received my interview schedule, and one of the professors' research interest does not match with mine at all while other professors on the list do.

And, I am not sure what's the appropriate way to react when I interview with this professor.

Does anyone have any advice?

[eucalyptus]

Hello all,

I just received my interview schedule, and one of the professors' research interest does not match with mine at all while other professors on the list do.

And, I am not sure what's the appropriate way to react when I interview with this professor.

Does anyone have any advice?

When I went for my visit weekend, I had 5 interviews, 3 of which were really quite unrelated to my interests. One of them was the chair of the subfield, so I asked him general questions about the program. One was with a neuro researcher, but he was interested in my research ideas and gave me some ideas on how to put a neuro spin on them (which I don't really plan to do, but it was an interesting conversation nonetheless); we found we had some interests in common when we spoke, even though they weren't listed on his website or anything. With the final prof, I told him about my work, he told me about his, and there really wasn't much overlap at all. I just asked him questions about his work and other questions about the department atmosphere, program, colloquia, etc. It's a bit strange to interview with someone who has wildly different interests than you, but you just have to do with it - even if they study something very different, they can get an idea of what kind of student/person you are by talking to you, and they'll still have useful information for you.

[UnlikelyGrad]

It's unclear whether you're going for a pre-admission interview or a post-admission visit where they are trying to convince you to accept their offer. For the former case, it doesn't matter whether the prof is a potential advisor--he might be on the adcomm!

It's not as obvious why you should talk to the guy in the latter case, so let me try to explain. First of all, it's pretty normal, when you go for a visit, to talk to every professor in your subfield, even if your interests don't match. If you don't have commonalities in your research interests, talk about the program instead. Or what it's like to live in the city. Show genuine interest in them as a person.

Let me illustrate with a story. When I visited this school I spent an hour or so with every professor in the (interdisciplinary) program. One was an older professor nearing retirement. I walked in, and the first thing he said was, "I'm not taking new students, so there's really no point in talking to me. Who's next on your schedule? I'll take you there and see if he's free."

I said fine, we could do that in a bit, but could I ask him one quick question? I'd noticed from something in his office that we shared a mutual interest, and I wondered what the facilities for that were like in the area...well, we started talking, first about the mutual interest, then about living in the area in general, then about the program (he'd been here for over 30 years and was a wealth of information)...next thing you know, our allotted time was past! My student host was amazed that he'd said anything to me at all...he is notorious for not talking to students.

Well, I ended up coming here, of course, and guess who teaches two of the required classes for my program? He is still pretty reticent with most people, but he does come up to talk to me about things, even outside of class time.

So remember, just because a professor won't be your advisor doesn't mean you will never interact with him. It's good to have friends and allies amongst the faculty...who knows, they might even end up on your thesis committee.