Writing Sample Length Questions

[Habermas]

Does the page limit most schools give include or exclude figures? Its obvious references/bilbiography are not counted, but how should we count figures when they can add up to 2-3 pages? I've reached out to multiple programs with this question. Those that have responded seem not to be too strict on length, but some schools with low page limits haven't gotten back to me.

[guest789]

Uh I think references and bibliography are counted in the page limit... Aren't they? 

I'd just get it under the limit of, say, 20 pages. Shorten your lit review. A lot of political scientists enjoy reading the empirical stuff way more than a literature review. I would not cut your graphs - they are your contribution to the literature and show that you can (hopefully or have the potential to) do independent, empirical political science research. You basically want to mimic a political science journal article as much as you can. 

My paper is 18 pages with 4 graphs and a title page with an abstract. I single-spaced my bibliography, but everything else is double spaced. I think this is a fairly standard length for grad school apps and in the discipline overall.

EDIT: If you have additional things that you want to include, but aren't crucial to the main point of your paper, put them in an appendix and upload it to GitHub or another web-hosting page.

This is just my opinion as a fellow applicant, FWIW.

Edited December 10, 2020 by timeseries
Added more info

[essiec]

5 hours ago, timeseries said:

Uh I think references and bibliography are counted in the page limit... Aren't they?

No. (Well, definitely not bibliography, at least. If a professor asked for X#-page paper, you wouldn't include 3 pages of bibliography in that page count. Same with admissions requirements, in my view. I don't count the cover/title page in the page count, either.)

I cite in Chicago with footnotes (for History), so I do lump that together with body text as the main pages that I count.

5 hours ago, timeseries said:

put them in an appendix

^^^^^ This. It's is a clever work-around that would certainly be acceptable if it makes sense to pull it out from the context of your text.

[gougou]

I wrote my writing sample with 26 pages, and it turns out to work well. The case is to conduct amazing works in WS, don’t worry about the length too much