How many programs did you apply to?

[Tinieblas.]

Thanks everyone for your feedback and advice : )  It's been immensely helpful to hear all of your opinions and I'll keep them in mind when I'm making my plans.  

[mariannem]

Wyatt's Terps, I hope I'm not overstepping my boundaries in saying this, but I think you should take the advice you received from adcoms with a grain of salt. These committees had already made the decision to reject you, for whatever reason (and probably not one that had anything to do with you as much as the fact that there were just other people they wanted to work with MORE), and telling you that your writing sample was lacking was justification after the fact. Of course that's what they're going to say. Unless there was some other glaring reason for your rejection that they can go to straightaway (GPA/GRE didn't meet the cut-off, for instance), they are going to go to your writing sample and say it wasn't fill-in-the-blank enough (theorized, historicized, cutting-edge). They are not going to say to you, "Wyatt's Terps, you were awesome, but other candidates came with big-name recommenders we can't turn down because reasons." So they are going to say some BS about your writing sample. 

I'll let you in on a secret: most people have truly shitty writing samples. The reason? Because most people aren't writing at the level of ABD PhD students or junior faculty. Some people are, obviously, and they're the people who get into all the top programs. But 95% of people are not anywhere close to that level. Believe me, I have read my fair share of writing samples, and most are lacking in obvious ways. Why? Because these writing samples were written by BAs or senior English majors! EVERYONE is pulling from older criticism, or putting forward interpretations that were already put to rest in 1995. Very few BAs have had the time or occasion to really think through scholarship and source texts in ways that would produce truly daring, original readings. If everyone was capable of such a feat, then grad school would be unnecessary. I'm basically living proof of this: I fielded a boring application with a boring writing sample. I got lucky (got into one program). 5-6 years later, and after much gnashing of teeth, shitloads of reading, miles of rewriting and trashed dissertation ideas, rejections from conferences and journals followed by eventual acceptances, I finally produced scholarship that peer reviewers started to call imaginative and original. But this was a long process of learning to be a scholar. I did not have "it" when I applied--evidenced by the 10 or so rejections I received. I finally acquired "it" later. 

So anyway, if I were you, I wouldn't feel too bad about what these people have told you about your writing sample. I'm guessing it was not "lacking"--at least no more lacking than the writing samples fielded by the vast majority of other candidates, some of whom they admitted. 

Just wanted to say thank you for this. I felt like I was going to throw up thinking about my writing sample, but this curbed that.  

[silenus_thescribe]

Wyatt's Terps, I hope I'm not overstepping my boundaries in saying this, but I think you should take the advice you received from adcoms with a grain of salt. These committees had already made the decision to reject you, for whatever reason (and probably not one that had anything to do with you as much as the fact that there were just other people they wanted to work with MORE), and telling you that your writing sample was lacking was justification after the fact. Of course that's what they're going to say. Unless there was some other glaring reason for your rejection that they can go to straightaway (GPA/GRE didn't meet the cut-off, for instance), they are going to go to your writing sample and say it wasn't fill-in-the-blank enough (theorized, historicized, cutting-edge). They are not going to say to you, "Wyatt's Terps, you were awesome, but other candidates came with big-name recommenders we can't turn down because reasons." So they are going to say some BS about your writing sample. 

I'll let you in on a secret: most people have truly shitty writing samples. The reason? Because most people aren't writing at the level of ABD PhD students or junior faculty. Some people are, obviously, and they're the people who get into all the top programs. But 95% of people are not anywhere close to that level. Believe me, I have read my fair share of writing samples, and most are lacking in obvious ways. Why? Because these writing samples were written by BAs or senior English majors! EVERYONE is pulling from older criticism, or putting forward interpretations that were already put to rest in 1995. Very few BAs have had the time or occasion to really think through scholarship and source texts in ways that would produce truly daring, original readings. If everyone was capable of such a feat, then grad school would be unnecessary. I'm basically living proof of this: I fielded a boring application with a boring writing sample. I got lucky (got into one program). 5-6 years later, and after much gnashing of teeth, shitloads of reading, miles of rewriting and trashed dissertation ideas, rejections from conferences and journals followed by eventual acceptances, I finally produced scholarship that peer reviewers started to call imaginative and original. But this was a long process of learning to be a scholar. I did not have "it" when I applied--evidenced by the 10 or so rejections I received. I finally acquired "it" later. 

So anyway, if I were you, I wouldn't feel too bad about what these people have told you about your writing sample. I'm guessing it was not "lacking"--at least no more lacking than the writing samples fielded by the vast majority of other candidates, some of whom they admitted. 

There's nothing to add to this excellent comment of my_muse's; right on the money, this one. One of the biggest struggles of the application season is wrangling the feeling that your statement of purpose has to do everything: cover everything you've achieved, learned, and hope to ever do. Of course, fitting that into word limits spanning 500 to 1000/1500 words is impossible, and ad comms know that, even if you keep telling yourself that you need the everything of it all. With an application, you're asking a university to say, "Yes, we'll make a 4-6 year investment in you as a scholar," a major decision that no SOP can ever be fully convincing about. The right frame of mind, then, is not, "How do I write this SOP so that I look fully ready for graduate work?", but rather, "How do I write this SOP so that the ad comms sees the potential to make me a professional scholar?"