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Hello everyone.

I'm an italian student and I'm applying these days for a


MSc in the UK. I will send this Statement of Purpose to Oxford and
Cambridge, of course, and to other english universities. I'll be very thankful
if you could help me. Here it is:

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

Having reached the final year of my degree in pure mathematics I want to


continue broadening my knowledge by undertaking a MSc in [course
name].

I should start by saying that I come from a very traditional kind of high
school (Liceo Classico, or Classical Lyceum) in which the most important
subjects were Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek, philosophy and history, with
very few hours dedicated to mathematics and physics.

I had always been competent in mathematics but I was not supported at


school, and found myself studying on my own. I especially liked proofs, and
it was my habit to read and learn them even if it was not compulsory to do
so, because I could not accept a formula given as true with no explanation
at all. It was just some months before the end of high school that I started
to read many (both popular and academic) books about pure mathematics,
logical paradoxes and philosophy of language. This led me to see that
mathematics was the right choice for me, therefore I decided to apply for a
BSc in pure mathematics in Italy. However, I was concerned that most of
my future fellow students would have much stronger mathematical
backgrounds than I had and that the teacher would assume a lot of material
which was unknown to me. I was pleased to discover that I kept up well
with the curriculum, and in addition maintained an interest in reading and
studying literature and philosophy by myself during my spare time.

During these years I have had the opportunity to deal with a wide range of
branches of mathematics and I must say that, as I expected, I am now
more interested than ever in the "abstract part" of mathematics (namely:
abstract algebra, topology, mathematical logic, mathematical analysis, etc.)
rather than its applications. I think I can see Russel's "cold and austere"
beauty of number theory, for instance, regardless of its usage in modern
cryptography. However I believe it was beneficial to take lectures in
physics, statistics and computer science because it is true that much of
mathematics arose to provide some models to the inductive sciences. I
enjoy working at the interface between mathematics and computing,
especially in C++.

I would also like to stress my interest in mathematical logic. I had a brief


introduction to this particular discipline as a lecture which covered the basic
topics, from Tarski's definition of satisfaction up to the compactness
theorem. I found it quite captivating, and I became very interested in
everything which dealt with the foundations of mathematics. Moreover, I
read the book \emph{Axiom of Choice} by Horst Herrlich and I decided to
deepen my knowledge in set theory in order to write my final thesis on the
topic of the independence of the axiom of choice from the Zermelo-
Fraenkel theory. Two of my main sources for this independent study are:
\emph{Set Theory: an introduction to large cardinals}by Frank R. Drake and
\emph{Set Theory: an introduction to independence proofs'}by Kenneth
Kunen. The more time I spent on this, the more I realize how much I am
intrigued by this stupefying field.

I plan to graduate in the end of July this year and I have already decided to
leave my present institution mostly because it cannot offer to me the wide
range of logic lectures I would like to take. I have read the description of the
MSc in [course name] and it is to my excitement that the lectures offered in
the program are exactly the ones that would fulfill my need: not only a large
selection of courses on logic and the foundation of mathematics, but also
many other lectures on the all other areas of pure mathematics. I am
actually thrilled that all the lessons will be in English. I enjoy reading
English literature a lot in my free time, and furthermore, during high school I
spent one year in New Zealand attending lessons and exams, and did
encounter any problems.

Moreover I would be honoured to study at an institution with such a


reputation as the University of [name], on the one hand because it offers
top-quality mathematical education on a worldwide scale, and on the other
because at [name] I would certainly be able to find the genuinely
stimulating intellectual and scientific environment that I seek

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