Writing sample in wrong field and based on application

[hnotis]

I will be applying to (mostly masters) Communication Studies programs next Fall.  My problem is that my strongest example of academic writing is a paper I wrote for a graduate level psychology class that I was able to take as an undergrad.  The other potential problem is that the paper is an "issue analysis" and not a research paper.  Essentially, I had to apply different theories of learning to an issue of my choosing- my issue being the implementation and execution of a freshman college course that would help students get acclimated to college more efficiently.  Though it was an issue analysis, it was heavily research based- taking different theories of learning, analyzing them thoroughly, and applying them to the issue.

 

My main reasons for thinking this would be an acceptable sample and possibly my best paper to submit:

 

1. Both the paper and my field of interest are in the social sciences so I believe the adcoms will be able to evaluate the effectiveness of my writing.  They may not be entirely familiar with all the theories presented, but I made sure to be transparent when introducing the theories so that almost anyone could follow along with the application.  Along with this, a lot of communication research is based in psychology methodology and that is how I plan to execute my research in grad school- with a heavy dependence on my background in psychology.

 

2.  I think this is my strongest example of academic writing because it was written for a graduate level class and evaluated at the same level as all the other graduate level papers.  This means to me that this is an example of graduate level research work (or it will be after a few revisions- I was a percent away from receiving an A on the paper and my professor gave me plenty of useful feedback).

 

3. The only other research oriented work I have done essentially boil down to being literature reviews- i.e. analyzing previous works, pointing out limitations, suggesting directions for further research- and only one is in the field of Communication and it is far from anything resembling my research interests.  I realize that this is somewhat common in the humanities/social sciences so maybe they wouldn't be the worst choice for submission, but surely not the best.

 

 

I will be taking my final Communication capstone course this Fall and if I have the opportunity to perform research in my area of interest, I most definitely will, however I do not want to cut it super close and I do want to have a back up in case nothing impressive comes out of this course.

 

What does everyone here think?  Would it be worth it to try to do paper independent of my course work that would better fit my field and interests?  Or would my energy be best channeled toward studying for the GRE and writing a killer SOP and just go with my issue analysis as a writing sample?

I would love to hear your thoughts and advice!

[Guest Gnome Chomsky]

I submitted a paper on Second Language Acquisition for a program in Computational Linguistics. They didn't seem to mind. I think they just want to see if you're a good writer and capable of doing research. Most people don't have quality writing samples in the exact program they're applying to. 

[Gvh]

On a slight tangential note, does anyone have any thoughts as to whether a published research article can be used as a writing sample? I wouldn't be the only author, so I was wondering if this would be acceptable (though, I would be the lead author). 

[themmases]

On a slight tangential note, does anyone have any thoughts as to whether a published research article can be used as a writing sample? I wouldn't be the only author, so I was wondering if this would be acceptable (though, I would be the lead author). 

 

I don't think you should use a paper that has other authors. Even if you wrote it, it should have received significant editing from others. It should also be in your CV, so reviewers can still look it up if they want. If you don't have an appropriate writing sample, it would be better to rework a related paper of which you are sole author, or write something new. Whether unrelated or literature review papers are appropriate really depends on your programs. Some have length limits that rule out major research papers, and some don't request a writing sample at all (none of my epi programs did, for example).

 

If you work in a field where most of your published work will have coauthors, it's worth your time to develop a couple professional writing samples of which you are the sole author. Even though my programs didn't want them, I recently applied for a job that did. I used a sample research plan and a post for a blog I update occasionally on research ethics. Not only were those directly related to the field, they enabled me to apply for that job an hour after it posted.