Advice on putting POI in my SOP

[Arabella505]

Hello everyone. Happy Holidays and congrats everyone who is receiving invitations

i'm applying for the first time and wonder whether I should indicate POI in my essay. I have recently contacted POI and asked about his research. In short, we had quite lengthy conversation. Also I asked whether he recruits new graduate students for Fall 2016, he said that he may take students to his lab after the lab rotations only. 

So can you advice me whether I should indicate him in my SOP? I mean applications are reviewed by other committee members as well, so I'm afraid it could negatively affect my application (they may ask something like: "why doesn't she want to work with me?" or something like this)

thanks in advance.

[rising_star]

It won't negatively affect your application to say that you've been in communication with a professor in the department about your shared interests in X and Y. 

[Focus]

I included a section for a few professors of interest (I didn't contact any beforehand). It strongly tied into my research interests and my justifications for choosing the particular university and program. 
 

[peachypie]

In all of my applications I selected about 3 PIs of interest to me and a brief explanation of why or what intrigued me about their work.  Definitely doesn't hurt to add in names but it is good to have more than one since it is never a good idea to apply to a school where you have interest in working with one PI only. 

[onceinalifetime]

Yea I put in 2 or 3 PIs who interested me. Just write two or 3 sentences about each so in total you have a small paragraph about that. Scour the departments website for info about what should be in your SoP. Some offer detailed instructions or at least a list of points they want you to hit in it. Also, for me, some of the sites explicitly said they wanted me to mention potential PI's in the SoP. But in any case, it's pretty common to mention a couple of names, so it won't hurt.

[biochemgirl67]

Here's how I did it.  I only had room to talk about one professor in depth so I chose one I really liked and talked about why, including a connection to a recent publication to show that I read the paper.  However, I only had room to discuss one professor in depth so if I mentioned others it was through a list.  I'm not saying what I did was the best, but just that it's an option.

 

Maybe you can mesh taking about your personal connection to the prof and his work to balance it.  But you should mention him if you're communication has been meaningful to you.

Edited January 3, 2016 by biochemgirl67