Switching Topics Once in Graduate School I plan to pursue a graduate school &quot;career&quot; in theoretical condensed matter physics in the US; however, getting into a grad program as a theory student is quite difficult due to limited spacing, little funding, and high competition. Should I instead apply as an experimentalist and then switch over to theory in grad school? Or should I not say &quot;experimentalist' or &quot;theorist&quot; in my statement of purpose and instead focus on the topic(s) in condensed matter physics that interest me and include names of professors in theory and experiment? In the former case, is the action ethical? In the latter case, will it seem that I am not focused? Please advise, since I do not want to narrow my options.
At this stage it doesn't matter, so you can choose whatever you like (or whatever you think is more promising etc) and switch (or not switch) later.It is quite common for phd students in cond-mat to do both (some) theory and (some) experiments during their phd. I'd also not be worried about being &quot;ethical&quot; here because people do change their interests, and it is totally unreasonable to expect a student to choose a line of research for their entire life.