How to address multiple interest areas in Statement of Purpose?

[Lumii]

Hi all, I'm currently tackling my statement of purpose, but I have multiple interest areas (that being code analysis/formal verification and mobile computing), and I'm struggling to include both without sounding flimsy. All of the well written statements I've read seem to be laser focused on a particular interest area, which allows the writer to shape their narrative to back up how well they will fit into researching that area. For example, a starting sentence of "My primary interest is xxx" is much stronger than "My primary interest is xxx and yyy", and then to go on supporting them both.

 

With more than one interest area, I'm less certain for how to approach writing my statement. Has anyone else done this or have any advice? Thanks in advance!

[CSallday]

Are you interested in somehow combining these areas? Or are these simply two different areas that you are interested in?

[Lumii]

Just big interests of mine, although it can be combined it's not frequently researched like that so I don't expect to actually research these together.

[TakeruK]

I was interested in two topics, X and Y, when applying to grad schools. When picking schools to apply to, I picked schools that would be good fits for X and/or Y.

 

For schools that were strong in X, I wrote about my interest in X and why that school would be great for me to do X at. I did the same thing for schools strong in Y. So, I would recommend you write at least two versions of "what are you interested in?" part of the SOP. In fact, this is a simplification--I wrote a different set of paragraphs to address this point for every single school, not just two versions!

 

Think of it this way: the admissions committee is not necessarily interested in every thing you are interested in! Just pick and choose the interests/reasons/goals you picked that particular school to apply to and then write your SOP for that school around those reasons. It's perfectly fine to apply to one school to meet one of your goals and another school to meet a different goal.

[Lumii]

Thank you! I wrote my SOP accordingly. I hope it works out!