narrowing your research interests

So one part of this journey is deciding you are going to go for the PhD. The other part is deciding what you're actually going to study and focus on. I feel like I am the type of person that is just interested in EVERYTHING, like when I started my MPH program I felt like I wanted to save all of the problems in the world. As much as saving the world is a great thing (although the cynic in me now feels that is impossible...that's a story for another time), I think applying to PhD programs without some kind of specific research interest/topic could be interpreted as a lack of passion or focus. In talking with my colleagues, the people who have been successful in applying to PhD programs generally have an idea of what kinds of specific research questions they would be interested in exploring (even if they don't have the plan of how they would carry that out). 

It can seem daunting to pick just one thing to focus on, and there is always the fear of pigeon-holing into an area too. I think the way this can happen really differs for everyone, and I don't have any step-by-step advice for "picking your research interest," but I can tell my story of how it happened for me in a quite fun and natural way. 

So when I started my MPH, I had been working in non-public health corporate jobs for 2 years and almost had to rediscover why I was interested in the public health when I was in undergrad. I knew from undergrad that I enjoyed teaching and working with students (with all of my orientation and TAing experience), so I generally translated that to an interest in adolescent/young adult health. And then because I had maybe "a little too much fun" during undergrad that contradicted everything I learned in health education in high school, I wanted to try and address prevention of adolescent risk behaviors, such as risky sexual behavior and/or substance use. Which I felt like was still a very broad broad topic, and I really had trouble finding research positions and extracurriculars that excited me my first year of my MPH for this reason. 

In looking for my summer internship for my MPH, I identified potential mentors at universities who were doing research in adolescent risk behavior prevention, and I ended up at Stanford (as I have described elsewhere in this blog). I found my Stanford mentor because her profile stated she studied "adolescent health behaviors such as sexual health," but in actually speaking with her found out that all of her current intervention work and grants have now pivoted towards adolescent tobacco prevention and education. Although I had no experience or exposure to tobacco prevention or tobacco research, I had so much fun doing my summer internship projects and sort of just fell in love with the research aspect of my work. My mentor had me act as if I were a "secret investigator" of all the controversial Juul Labs stuff going on that summer (since it was the summer of 2018) and I became completely drawn into the field by that experience. 

In applying to PhD programs, immediately after that summer internship, I decided to just go with that interest in adolescent vaping prevention, even though it was what I considered a very recent and new interest of mine. It felt good to be able to speak about such a specific topic that I felt very passionate about, even if I technically only had 3 months of experience in it. People didn't seem to care about the length of experience I had in researching adolescent vaping, but were impressed with what I had accomplished during that short amount of time and my eagerness to continue to explore that topic during my PhD training. 

So in narrowing research interests for the purposes of PhD programs, I would not recommend recreating the wheel, but just taking a look at the work you have done that you are passionate about, and try and pick your top 1-2 things to focus on and lift up throughout the application process.