Javiar

Since PhD is going to be researchy, I would ensure the major emphasis of the LoR should be on how good of a researcher you were .. irrespective of the relevance of ur current work to proposed PhD. That is showing potential to think deep, harness and siff through tonnes of resources etc etc

But isn't one supposed to write in the SOP how they were led to a certain area of interest? But i guess it may be ok to have a strong area of interest and a another not so strong one. Just have to make sure they sound equally strong on paper.

Right .. Was drafting my SOP since last 10 days editing forever every word written down and now I am thinking what if my single research interest is no longer available because the funds have gone to bail out Wall St firms instead. Now the univ website clearly tells not to contact faculty .. so have abstained that is until I began to get nervous. Then i did contact a prof with similar interest as mine and she said .. "I dont have time to reply to every student that writes to me" .. which is understandable. Which puts me in a fix .. should I write more than one interests, since i read some where it may be a good idea to include more than one. But since it is a PhD SOP, i thought we needed to have a sharper focus or is it? Thoughts .. J

In your SOP, is it a good or bad idea to express 2 areas of interest? Just in case one research interest does not have funding and the other might have? They are not totally unrelated like apples and oranges. Reason being I have a strong motivation to pursue research in Area A but my background/experience is Area B .. but i really want Area A but because of my experience (and some interest) in Area B, I may have an advantage over Area A. But I suspect my SOP will be lopsided in promoting Area A. Help!!