Could it hurt my grad school application if I state a secondary research interest in which I have little experience? Background: CS Undergrad applying to CS PhD USA.
I am interested in this 'X' domain but have not really invested time to do 'research' in it because it is computationally very demanding and I do not have access to such resources.
I have covered a good amount of theory in the topic but that doesn't add up to much unless I can show some form of practical implementation. That's just how the domain is.
I would really love to explore/research in the domain during my graduate tenure.
Question: Will it make me look bad if I say so while applying to graduate programs?
Note: I have good amount of research done in my current domain 'Y' and I will be mentioning that I will want to primarily want to work on that during my graduate tenure. But this domain 'X' has few avenues I would like to explore because it has shown to be beneficial when applied in 'Y'. Apart from that, the field on its own is extremely interesting to me.
I seriously doubt it will make much difference. You say you primarily want to work on Y, and your research experience is in Y, so you'll be judged as &quot;a prospective Y student.&quot; If applying X to Y is a reasonable thing to do, then saying you're interested in X shouldn't hurt you at all. But without any real background in X, it also probably won't help you much.