Explaining changing fields in sop

[azrael]

I am applying for masters in Machine learning for next fall. I am currently pursuing my undergraduate in Electronics and Communication Engineering. When I entered the degree, I had absolutely no idea about which field I wanted to enter. I explored various fields (automobiles, biomedical electronics, robotics) and did internships in them and finally ended up taking machine learning. This took me a lot of time (around 2 years) but now I am confident that I want to pursue it. So what I want to ask is, should I write this in my sop? Won't I run into the risk of appearing too disfocused and hence getting my application thrown out? If yes(I should write it), then how should I structure it?

[knp]

In my statements where I applied for a different field than I pursued in undergrad, this is the structure I used. It is not a complete essay structure, since it doesn't include introduction, conclusion, fit, or whatever, but it is what I used for the part of my essay when I was explaining my background.

• Here is the Topic I am interested in studying in New Field.
• Here is my background with New Field as a discipline, specifically as qualifies me to pursue Topic.
• Before I realized that I wanted to study Topic through New Field, I studied Topic through Old Field.
• Here are the things that I learned in Old Field that may help me with studying Topic in New Field.
  • This paragraph is OPTIONAL. If you switched to machine learning, like, two years and two internships ago, you might be able to omit it entirely if you wanted. But if you switched to it, like, only in your senior year and with limited research experience, it's good to include your background with other topics, with maybe one sentence for what you learned from each.
• Anyway let's talk some more about what I am Proposing to Do at Your Institution. (Conclusion, fit paragraph, whatever.)

As long as you present your history as a two-part thing, I don't think you should appear too unfocused. There are only two parts: Current Interests (all within or related to machine learning) and Past Interests (which are going to be relegated to a single paragraph in which you talk about what, if anything, relevant for machine learning that you took away from each of them). The fact that in the past you cycled through several interests is irrelevant, because none of them are your current interest any more.

PS Trying new things in one's first years of undergrad is not only totally normal, but should be encouraged!