How specific should career/research goals be?

Answers to various questions regarding the SMART Scholarship application process. Includes many tips and statistics.
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How specific should career/research goals be?

Post by Guest »

I want to apply to SMART for the last 2 years of my BS this fall, and I was just wondering if it would be better to have very specific research/career goals, or to go more general?

My long-term goals are to do research in the design, development, and life-cycle management of missile systems. However, since only a handful of sponsoring facilities specifically mention that they work in missile system development and/or maintenance, would it be better for me to state a more general purpose?

Thank you in advance.

RPI CSE

Re: How specific should career/research goals be?

Post by RPI CSE »

From what I have read and experienced, both here and in other areas, it is better to be specific than general. I stated that I would like to work in networking in me research/career goals and I was contacted by two groups at one facility that had nothing to do with networking.

From an individual point of view, being general means you are willing to do anything and you are flexible, from the view of the company it says you are desperate and trying to hard to fit in anywhere and everywhere.

Being specific is not a bad thing, unless you state something along the lines of "I want to work on the design, development, and life-cycle management of missile systems and nothing else ever no matter what it is," most groups will assume that you enjoy that, but you would be flexible to do other things.

So go ahead and be specific, it doesn't limit you to the extent that being general does. There are 3000 applications that go into the pool at first, rest assured they are not looking for people who are willing to do anything, they are looking for people with their own thoughts and desires, even if they don't match up with a group perfectly, the people with their own thoughts generally adapt better to complex situations.

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Above the line are my opinions mixed with what I have learned from hiring managers and from people who actually have jobs or offers. No guarantee that I am right but I have done my research into it.

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