<p>For most of my schools there is only one professor who I want to work with, so I can easily tailor my SOP to fit with their research agenda. However, I have a few schools where I am interested in multiple labs who are accepting students. To those students applying with the same situation or who applied and were accepted into departments where you had multiple interests... how did you go about addressing it in your statement of purpose without offending any of the labs. I am definitely interested in particular lab groups, but in some cases, the schools have several professors I would enjoy working with almost equally. I don't want to sound flaky, but I want the school to know that I would be happy in more than one lab. Advice is appreciated.</p>
<p>Most schools would actually prefer you have more than one professor you want to work with there. A lot of times personalities clash, funding didn’t come through, your spot gets taken by someone else, the professor isn’t taking students, the professor gets hit by a bus halfway through your PhD, or a multitude of other problems.</p>
<p>If anything, I’d say schools would be happier to know you have a few faculty you’d like to work for instead of just one.</p>
<p>Indeed, limiting yourself to a single professor (or even just a couple) is a bad move. For example, if, as RacinReaver mentioned, that professor says he/she isn’t currently taking graduate students (doesn’t have the resources for more, etc.), then there’s no reason for a graduate program to admit you.</p>
<p>In fact, when I was choosing schools to apply to, some of my recommenders even suggested I only go with schools where there were at least 10 people I could easily see myself working with.</p>
<p>As for “offending the labs,” that doesn’t happen. Everyone knows most graduate students have interests in multiple labs, and no PI is going to be upset by that fact. Some PIs, if not informed about it by the admissions committee members, will never even know of your interest if you ultimately don’t end up joining their labs.</p>
<p>I agree with the posts above – I decided not to apply to Scripps, Berkeley, MIT, CalTech, Duke, Princeton, … because I couldn’t find more than one person I would really like to rotate with (you typically rotate in three labs during your first year, so if I couldn’t find three labs I would be happy to rotate in, I eliminated it). I have at least 4 (most 8+) people I want to rotate with at each school. This actually was the best way to narrow my list.</p>
<p>That’s hard to do when your research interests are specific and few people are doing that kind of thing. It is funny to me how opposite this is of the Canadian system when you have to have one person you want to work with, and if you don’t secure that one person, don’t bother applying.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the input. I should also have clarified about the one professor portion as well… for those labs I know the professor has both space and funding. But I’m glad to hear I won’t be offending anyone by mentioning my interests in the other labs as well. </p>
<p>Here’s another portion of the question. For one school I need to make seperate applications to two different departments… should I have entirely different SOP for each school. I’m looking to do similiar work in both departments, but I was not sure how to address the fact that I am applying to both areas of the school. To be more specific, I’ve found professor’s I want to work with at Duke in both Evolutionary Anthropology as well as in the Nicholas School for the Environment.</p>
<p>^ Just be honest. Seriously, state your reasons for why you are applying to each. Make the SOPs as different/same as they need to be, don’t change things that apply to both but change the specific things for each program. I wouldn’t worry too much about it. It seems to me that you’ve research things very well and you know what you want to do, even if they are different things, that’s okay. I’m interested in two different areas of research, not because I haven’t research it, but because there’s more than just one cool thing out there!</p>