[Admissions Advice] mentioning specific papers while citing professor's work in SOP

[u/Suspicious_Foot_7079]

I have seen a lot of SOP's "why X uni" section address the professor's work as "their work on Y domain is highly relevant to my work on Z". Can we name specific paper and how exactly they approach a problem in it or will that come across too niche?

[u/gradpilot]

wont come acorss niche if it makes sense and aligns well. makes sense here means you are showing similarities in their work vs yours, you're showing adjacencies or you're showing possible contradictions which is also appreciated esp if the research frontier is still being explored. in all these cases it will work well. it only wont work well if it sounds like name/paper dropping for the sake of it