Writing sample #2 is very assignment-y

[woolfie]

For one of my schools they want two writing samples, a long one and a short one. The long one, 16 pages, is the one I'm sending to all of my schools, so I had to unearth and heavily edit my most recent 8 page paper, which is three years old and obviously written for an undergraduate class. (I have only a BA). It is really undergraduate-y and it was written for an assignment in which we had to analyze any texts of our choosing, using ONE theorist from the Norton anthology of criticism (it was for an intro to literary theory class). So I only engage one theorist and one essay for the criticism I use. Though I think it's a good paper to use because the texts I used are in my area and it really complements the other paper.

So. I was kind of thinking about writing a little paragraph explaining the assignment and wondered what people here thought about that. Would that be weird? I already submitted my personal statement to the application online, so I can't mention it there. I'm really self-conscious of it sounding so assignment-y, am I right in feeling that way? Have other people submitted similar papers for a school that needed a short paper? I had my partner read it and he agreed that it was obviously written for an assignment and that just made me feel more self-conscious. The amount of editing I've done on it could have been spent on just writing a new 8 page paper and part of me is considering doing that.

(Also, I remember there being a thread about only using one source, but for some reason i couldn't find it in these forums.)

[shepardn7]

For one of my schools they want two writing samples, a long one and a short one. The long one, 16 pages, is the one I'm sending to all of my schools, so I had to unearth and heavily edit my most recent 8 page paper, which is three years old and obviously written for an undergraduate class. (I have only a BA). It is really undergraduate-y and it was written for an assignment in which we had to analyze any texts of our choosing, using ONE theorist from the Norton anthology of criticism (it was for an intro to literary theory class). So I only engage one theorist and one essay for the criticism I use. Though I think it's a good paper to use because the texts I used are in my area and it really complements the other paper.

So. I was kind of thinking about writing a little paragraph explaining the assignment and wondered what people here thought about that. Would that be weird? I already submitted my personal statement to the application online, so I can't mention it there. I'm really self-conscious of it sounding so assignment-y, am I right in feeling that way? Have other people submitted similar papers for a school that needed a short paper? I had my partner read it and he agreed that it was obviously written for an assignment and that just made me feel more self-conscious. The amount of editing I've done on it could have been spent on just writing a new 8 page paper and part of me is considering doing that.

(Also, I remember there being a thread about only using one source, but for some reason i couldn't find it in these forums.)

I don't really know, but I'm surprised you haven't written a 5-7 page paper in any of your advanced level (i.e., non-introductory) courses. I think that would be better because it's closer to, well, the current state of your brain (three years feels like a long time ago). But I do think the longer paper will be the most important one, and the one that gets you in. And I'm sure the 8 page paper shows off your smarts in your area, which is important. Plus they know you're coming straight from undergrad and that many of your short papers will respond to professors' prompts. So, in short, it's likely a more complex paper would make your overall sample stronger, but I have no idea if the assignment-ness of the paper will actually pose a problem, especially if your longer paper sufficiently demonstrates your potential for advanced-level work.

[wanderlust07]

I think the 1 source thread you mention is here:

Re. fine-tuning or selling this one: The SoP is gone beyond recall? (ie, the application itself has been submitted?) I ask, because many online applications will let you replace uploaded documents before the application itself has been submitted. If it's gone out into the blogoblog already, that gives us a better idea of your timeline. The thread above has some ideas about spending time in the SoP or LoRs discussing the context of the essays and how they relate.

Is there any way to flesh out the shorter piece (without adding length) to include a better sense of your current focus? You've no doubt grown a lot as a scholar and writer in three years--are there pieces that could be cut/condensed to leave room for a complimentary theoretical or critical lens to make it seem less assignment-y? What about it compliments the 16 page paper? Is that a relationship you can exploit or make more evident in the text itself?

I think that even if the SoP is gone beyond recall/there's insufficient time to do major restructuring, the adcomm can be relied upon to draw the connections between them. A cover letter with your supplementary materials might be partly used to touch on the genesis/connection as well, if you want to do some nudging.

[woolfie]

I don't really know, but I'm surprised you haven't written a 5-7 page paper in any of your advanced level (i.e., non-introductory) courses. I think that would be better because it's closer to, well, the current state of your brain (three years feels like a long time ago). But I do think the longer paper will be the most important one, and the one that gets you in. And I'm sure the 8 page paper shows off your smarts in your area, which is important. Plus they know you're coming straight from undergrad and that many of your short papers will respond to professors' prompts. So, in short, it's likely a more complex paper would make your overall sample stronger, but I have no idea if the assignment-ness of the paper will actually pose a problem, especially if your longer paper sufficiently demonstrates your potential for advanced-level work.

I have been out of school since then, and it was a 300 level course, it just was an intro to criticism if that explains it better. I really didn't write any short papers for many other upper level courses, it was all just final papers and presentations, I don't know if that's unusual or not. I agree about it being preferable to use a paper "closer to the current state of my brain" but I just don't have anything.

[woolfie]

I think the 1 source thread you mention is here:

Re. fine-tuning or selling this one: The SoP is gone beyond recall? (ie, the application itself has been submitted?) I ask, because many online applications will let you replace uploaded documents before the application itself has been submitted. If it's gone out into the blogoblog already, that gives us a better idea of your timeline. The thread above has some ideas about spending time in the SoP or LoRs discussing the context of the essays and how they relate.

Is there any way to flesh out the shorter piece (without adding length) to include a better sense of your current focus? You've no doubt grown a lot as a scholar and writer in three years--are there pieces that could be cut/condensed to leave room for a complimentary theoretical or critical lens to make it seem less assignment-y? What about it compliments the 16 page paper? Is that a relationship you can exploit or make more evident in the text itself?

I think that even if the SoP is gone beyond recall/there's insufficient time to do major restructuring, the adcomm can be relied upon to draw the connections between them. A cover letter with your supplementary materials might be partly used to touch on the genesis/connection as well, if you want to do some nudging.

Yes, the SoP is beyond recall, I already submitted the application because I'm a dummy. I think it's complimentary just because it focuses on some of the very specific, same issues and uses some of the same theory and criticism. I have been editing it heavily, but I haven't done any additional research. I do think I need to get this sent out as quickly as possible, but I think I could have the weekend to do more work. I think I would have to completely rewrite it if I were to do more research so right now I'm just considering putting a note/cover page that explains the assignment.

[greekdaph]

I wouldn't attach the assignment disclaimer because it draws attention to what you perceive as a deficiency in your paper: it's basically saying that you recognize that there's a flaw in your paper but that you chose not to address it (we all know that it's because you didn't have time, but a school might not see it that way). Especially when the expectation is that your writing sample will be your best work and will be heavily revised if necessary, that doesn't seem like a strong way to market yourself.

I also don't think that not using many secondary sources equates automatically to a flaw: schools extend a kind of generosity to students applying only with a BA and coming from close-reading-heavy undergraduate curriculums--they can train you to use theory, after all, but it's much harder to train you to be a good reader. For what it's worth, I did well in admissions when I applied a couple years ago, and both papers I submitted as writing samples didn't engage with theory at all--when they used secondary sources, they used them for biographical or bibliographical information.

What I would suggest, then, is that you think of paper #2 as "focused" rather than as assignment-y. In other words, your project in that paper is to use a theoretical frame to illuminate an important element of the text, to offer a close reading that also situates that reading within a scholarly context. Instead of going back to your SOP, you might consider writing a paragraph-long heading for the paper (when I did this, I italicized it and put it at the top of the page, even before the title). There, you can define what the paper does in ways that don't relate it back to an undergrad class but that show, instead, why this kind of reading is appropriate for a short scholarly paper or even where this could fit in a larger project. You could also use a paragraph like that to draw out the connections between this paper and your longer sample.

[Tybalt]

Do you have time to do a new short paper? If the school is Virginia (just a guess, since it's on my list too, and I haven't seen any other program ask for two papers), then you should have ~5 or 6 days to comfortably research and write a 5-8 page paper. You could try and target it towards the prof that you really want to work with, situating the paper in the same type of research/theory favored by that prof.