kickpuncher

I posted earlier about my troubles with writing my SOP. I got that done, but this one school I'm applying to is asking for two other things, and I have no idea what exactly they're looking for. The first thing they want is a SOP cover letter. My SOP is two pages. How long should the cover letter be and what should I say? The second thing they want is a "Personal Achievement/Contributions Statement". How is that different from a personal history?

I guess "don't want" is a bit strong. But going to grad school is definitely my second choice after getting a full-time job. It's something I'm doing out of necessity.

Hi, everyone. This is my first post here. I went to UCLA to study Electrical Engineering. I'm now applying to grad schools at UC Santa Cruz, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Davis. Here's the thing, though. The only reason I'm applying is because I'm having trouble finding a job. I wasn't very passionate about EE as an undergrad, and I actually have a low GPA (between 2.9 and 3). When I was at UCLA, the area of EE that most interested me was DSP and speech/image processing. I took a few classes in the subject and did okay (B's and A's). So now, I want to apply to these grad schools and mention, in my statement of purpose, that I want to study signal processing. But I don't really know what to say. Yes, I found it more interesting than all the other things I studied in EE, but I certainly was never planning on specializing in it in grad school. I did okay in the classes, and found them interesting, but not interesting enough that I planned on going to grad school to study the subject. So what should I say?