I understand that honesty is the best policy, but is it a good idea to say "I have no clue" when the SOP explicitly asks me to describe my "intentions relative to graduate study and life beyond the University"?
Basically, I don't have any ten-year plan. The main reason I'm going to apply for the Program at the University is that the Degree can give me great resources and offer me better choices after graduation. (Other reasons include I have friends in that area and I love the weather in California, but I guess those don't count?) I haven't really considered my life beyond the University, though: Life is just too dynamic for me to answer questions like whether to stay in academia or to enter the industry at this point, and I don't want to eliminate any possibility as early as now.
On the other hand, I do have some long-term goals, but I don't have a detailed plan on how to realize them. I just keep them in mind when making decisions. However, these goals are probably too ambitious, bold, and maybe stupid to be used as an intention: I'm going to develop a framework to unify Statistics and Machine Learning, turning all current work into "miscellaneous earlier efforts" like Newton did!
To clarify, I'm applying to both Masters and Ph.D. programs, because I don't really know what I'm after, so I'm just exploring different options and will take the best offered.