I am currently writing my "research proposal" for my PhD in Statistics application. I'm using quotes because technically this is not (or could not be) the actual research that I will perform during my PhD, but some sort of exercise to prove your writing skills. By the end of the template I have a slot under the name "References", and I've seen this kind of thing in other research.project templates that I've submitted.
I have some doubts regarding this, should I include all the references I've used while writing the research-proposal, or instead should I include the bibliography that I consider relevant, even thought it wasn't explicitly used in the text.
Furthermore, should I also include there the references regarding my statement of purpose, or is it better to write them down after the letter itself?
I am worried because I am asked to provide a "State of the Art" and of course I am citing a lot of articles, even thought I don't consider them strictly necessary for my research and I don't want to write down those references in the slot "References" if not needed (given that I can at most include 10 articles).
Hope you can give me some clue. Thanks in advance.