Writing Sample and MA Thesis

[UTARyan]

MA in History
Applying for PhD in American History
Applying to: NYU, Oklahoma University, University of Texas, NYU, UNC, & University of Wisconsin

I had planned on using portions of my MA Thesis as my writing sample. The MA thesis is 200+ pages long. Should I continue this plan and just try to match intro with a chapter that meets the writing sample length guidelines? Do I include bibliography? Title Page? 

[kafcat]

I have the same question...I have a 110 page thesis.. so Im thinking of a title page, table of contents (yes or no?), abstract, intro pages (about 2 1/2), maybe a small portion of the lit review, methods section, two of my results ( I had several hypotheses) and the final discussion..in total it should be a 25 page sample (at least for my poli sci PhD program). How are you planning to do yours @UTARyan

[kafcat]

@fuzzylogician a few days ago I saw one of your comments in one of these threads of sample papers...what do you think about my overall set-up (see above), the methods section is lengthy...and should I even bother with the lit review or should I just stick to the results and discussion portion of my thesis.

[fuzzylogician]

Hard to say without seeing it, but sounds like it could work if there is a contained hypothesis or two that you can flesh out, test, and discuss. That probably means you need to have some portion of the lit review, or at least some mention of the major issues, the relevant methods, results, discussion, broader implications. I'd add somewhere up front that this is a part of your MA thesis, and the full text can be found at (in case anyone wants to browse it).

This can be a lot of work--it amounts to taking your thesis and chopping it up into separate article-length paper(s). That's generally a good thing to do anyway, if there is anything publishable there, but it would usually be a multi-month process of work and revisions.