Qualitative Writing Samples?

[Helix]

I'm in the throes of nail-biting and mental blockage as this application season gets underway, and the two components of the application I'm still working on are the SoP and the writing sample.

The SoP is something I intend to dedicate a LOT of time to and is more dependent on the schools, but I'm still trying to figure out how to select the best writing sample and get those edits underway as well. Which leads me to this question:

Many, many folks have suggested to me that a writing sample, pared down to 25 pages or so, can basically be your best writing with original data and that you can cut out the lit review section to make it fit, no problem. My issue is, my master's thesis is probably my best *writing* and I have original data, but it's quite long (~100 pages) because that data is in the form of interviews that are woven into more than a dozen case studies. My next best option is already 25 pages but involves no original data whatsoever (it's a lit review, argument using secondary sources, and some graphs with a publicly available dataset--no regressions, etc.).

I'm aware that the writing sample should show that:

(1) I can write

(2) I can conduct research on my own and make an interesting argument

(3) ideally, that I have cohesive interests (i.e., it has to do with what I want to study).

But how do you do that with a ton of qualitative data that doesn't easily lend itself to being truncated to "sample" form?

[expatbayern]

Is there a coherent way to cut the MA thesis to, say, 3 selected cases (indicate that such cutting has been done to avoid confusion--you could perhaps say that you've included the most representative case, the one with the strongest support for the theory, and the one with the weakest, etc.)?

[balderdash]

Most departments indicate that a chapter of a thesis would be acceptable, even if it is only part of the argument being made - so long as it goes beyond a lit review. Wouldn't that suffice?

[Penelope Higgins]

You might consider sending an annotated chapter outline (1 short paragraph per chapter) of the entire thesis, and then attaching the chapter that best demonstrates your ability to think sharply and write precisely about a topic relevant to political science.

[Helix]

I think the annotated chapter outline + 1 full seems to make the most sense since I have "chapters" laid out just as a progression through the argument (e.g., intro, lit review, methods, cases, analysis, conclusions) rather than thematically--I was just worried a single chapter from that set would make no sense without the others to support it.