BloodAndBugs 🦠

A professor can genuinely like your profile and still choose another applicant. And sometimes, the problem isn’t your qualifications. It’s that your application hasn’t shown the professor how your existing experience translates into their research. So what exactly should you change? Three things. First: Stop describing your experience as a list of achievements. Start explaining what those experiences trained you to do. Don’t just write: “I worked on a project investigating X.” Explain the research question, the method you used, what you found, and what that experience taught you about investigating the problem. A professor needs to see your research capabilities, not just your participation. Second: Build an explicit bridge between your previous research and theirs. Suppose you’ve worked on antibiotic resistance, and the professor investigates bacterial adaptation using genomic approaches. Don’t simply say you’re interested in their research. Explain which question from your previous work made you interested in the mechanisms of adaptation, what you want to investigate next, and why their group’s approach is relevant to that question. You don’t need identical research experience. You need an intellectually credible progression. Third: Identify the specific contribution you could make. Read their recent papers. Identify the methods, analytical approaches or research questions relevant to the project. Then show what you already know, what you can transfer from your previous work, and what you would need to learn. For example, don’t claim expertise in genomic analysis if you’ve never performed it. Explain the computational or experimental skills you do have that provide a foundation for learning it. Here’s the distinction: Your application should not merely convince a professor that you want to join their research group. It should help them understand why your previous work makes you a credible next step for the research they want to pursue. That’s how you demonstrate research fit. Want to work me on writing compelling PhD applications? DM me “Research Fit”.