What writing sample to use

[AnimeChic101!]

Hi gradcafe,

I have a few quick questions. I currently have a well-written, thought out paper that I was originally going to use as my writing sample for my grad apps. It only needed minor edits and I was going to reduce it by about 5 pages (condensing a paper isn't too difficult for me due to having to do this process numerous times for conferences...thank goodness for that lesson haha). Here's the issue: it is within my area of desired speciality but it is a bit off from what I talk about in my SOP.  I have another paper that is already within my 15 page limit, falls directly into my area of intended expertise and aligns with my SOP, but the issue is that it needs major edits (like reconstructive surgery).  The good thing is that I will (hopefully) have time to edit prior to my early December due dates. The other issue is that I may not be able to edit this paper to be as good/strong as the one that resides a bit away from my SOP's description.

I can:

A) Edit the shorter paper extensively

B  ) Submit a lightly edited version of the longer paper 

C) do some major edits to the longer paper so that it includes more of the intellectual interests that my SOP describes (maybe even splice in some elements of the shorter paper that fit with my SOP...)

D ) Explain my rationale for submitting the original essay in my SOP

E) Drink tons of coffee and watch Netflix until i figure it out 

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!!

Edited September 5, 2016 by BlackRosePhD

[lesabendio]

Why not edit your SOP to align more closely with the topic of your longer paper? At this stage, I'd definitely go with the stronger paper and put your efforts into making your SOP fit the strengths of your writing sample. Even though the longer paper may not perfectly illustrate the research interests you set forth in your SOP, it'll still probably increase your chances of getting into a good PhD program better than the paper that needs significant revision. Keep in mind that your ultimate goal is to put together an application that best shows you've got the skills for doctoral work. That might mean deviating a little from the research interests that you really want to pursue for the sake of strengthening your application. 

[AnimeChic101!]

5 minutes ago, lesabendio said:

Why not edit your SOP to align more closely with the topic of your longer paper? At this stage, I'd definitely go with the stronger paper and put your efforts into making your SOP fit the strengths of your writing sample. Even though the longer paper may not perfectly illustrate the research interests you set forth in your SOP, it'll still probably increase your chances of getting into a good PhD program better than the paper that needs significant revision. 

The longer paper is the most straight forward version of my interests (without all the frills). The frills (the specific research questions I have) are what I believe will really differentiate me from others in my area. I feel that neglecting those areas of inquiry within my SOP in favor of having the SOP and paper align would be detrimental to my application. Plus, the SOP has gone through several rounds of edits at this point with various professors in my program. Editing that might actually be harder (since the SOP is a really weird genre).  But, then again, I want the SOP and WS to match.

 

[knp]

Why do they have to 'match'? I thought the writing sample was supposed to be just that: a sample of your writing...I don't think it's supposed to be understood as a sample chapter of your eventual thesis/dissertation. Obviously, if your best work is also on the topics of your future work, that's great! But I got into my PhD program based, like you say, largely on the strength of the questions in my SOP. Having never written a paper on those questions, though, I just used a chapter of my college senior thesis from several years ago, as sort of a "here's the level of the work I can do, even though my interests have evolved away from this methodological direction entirely." So perhaps that's what my advice would boil down to? Don't "explain" your choice of writing sample—that phrasing seems to portray it as a detriment you have to overcome, which could produce a defensive and/or distracting tone—but do frame it the way you want. For me that was, "two years ago, my research on this topic was at x place, as you can see in the writing sample. since then, I have done all this additional work and now my questions have evolved to y place, which I am now going to spend the next two paragraphs enumerating." Would something like that work for you?

[echo449]

FWIW, I was at a dinner a few months back with a group of Early Modernists and Victorianists, and almost all of them had written on modernists for their writing samples, though they had explained in detail in their statements of purpose the relevance of their submissions to their projected fields. 

[Dr. Old Bill]

1 hour ago, knp said:

Why do they have to 'match'? I thought the writing sample was supposed to be just that: a sample of your writing...I don't think it's supposed to be understood as a sample chapter of your eventual thesis/dissertation. Obviously, if your best work is also on the topics of your future work, that's great! But I got into my PhD program based, like you say, largely on the strength of the questions in my SOP. Having never written a paper on those questions, though, I just used a chapter of my college senior thesis from several years ago, as sort of a "here's the level of the work I can do, even though my interests have evolved away from this methodological direction entirely." So perhaps that's what my advice would boil down to? Don't "explain" your choice of writing sample—that phrasing seems to portray it as a detriment you have to overcome, which could produce a defensive and/or distracting tone—but do frame it the way you want. For me that was, "two years ago, my research on this topic was at x place, as you can see in the writing sample. since then, I have done all this additional work and now my questions have evolved to y place, which I am now going to spend the next two paragraphs enumerating." Would something like that work for you?

While I wholeheartedly agree in principle, I have read a lot of accounts (backed up by advice given by my advisor, who routinely sits on adcoms) that suggest that the two should match fairly closely. Of course, it's an open question as to what "closely" even means. The WS should certainly be in the period of the interests stated in your SOP, and if you have a particular critical methodology / approach that you like to use, it probably makes sense that that methodology is reflected in your WS and mentioned in your SOP. But it does sound as though the OP is thinking the two need to be hand-in-glove, and I'm not sure that's the case. If your WS is "a bit off" from your SOP, that shouldn't be an issue. As @knp and others have said, demonstrating your research and scholarship potential is probably a bit more important than demonstrating that what you have written about is what you want to do.

[AnimeChic101!]

 

3 hours ago, knp said:

Why do they have to 'match'? ... So perhaps that's what my advice would boil down to? Don't "explain" your choice of writing sample—that phrasing seems to portray it as a detriment you have to overcome, which could produce a defensive and/or distracting tone—but do frame it the way you want. For me that was, "two years ago, my research on this topic was at x place, as you can see in the writing sample. since then, I have done all this additional work and now my questions have evolved to y place, which I am now going to spend the next two paragraphs enumerating." Would something like that work for you?

I want them to match because I received advice similar to what Wyatt stated. In regards to the phrasing, I actually think that's perfect. Something along those lines might end up being my one sentence explanation.  Thank you for that piece of advice!

1 hour ago, Wyatt's Terps said:

While I wholeheartedly agree in principle, I have read a lot of accounts (backed up by advice given by my advisor, who routinely sits on adcoms) that suggest that the two should match fairly closely. Of course, it's an open question as to what "closely" even means. The WS should certainly be in the period of the interests stated in your SOP, and if you have a particular critical methodology / approach that you like to use, it probably makes sense that that methodology is reflected in your WS and mentioned in your SOP. But it does sound as though the OP is thinking the two need to be hand-in-glove, and I'm not sure that's the case. If your WS is "a bit off" from your SOP, that shouldn't be an issue. As @knp and others have said, demonstrating your research and scholarship potential is probably a bit more important than demonstrating that what you have written about is what you want to do.

I'll give a hypothetical example of what I'm doing. If somebody is a budding Shakespearinist with an interest in relating his work to concepts of colonialism and race studies (I'm just making something up here), but submits a paper on Shakespeare and an analysis of a play rather than creating that connection between Shakespeare and colonialism and race studies, would that be seen as an issue? Would that be a glaring error? If the person is able to depict a working knowledge of Shakespeare and race studies and colonialism in their SOP yet only show a working knowledge of Shakespeare, his texts and the scholars in conversation over a specific text, would that be a problem? It's technically the same area but it has a different focus. 

 

(I am not working with Shakespeare, but I just thought that this may be a good example). 

Edited September 5, 2016 by BlackRosePhD

[echo449]

To clarify, I do think matching is important, just that it's not a necessary condition for acceptance. If your far-and-away best writing (as in, you have no doubt what your strongest work is) doesn't match your field, it's definitely still worth considering submitting that. 

[Bumblebea]

1 hour ago, BlackRosePhD said:

 

 

I'll give a hypothetical example of what I'm doing. If somebody is a budding Shakespearinist with an interest in relating his work to concepts of colonialism and race studies (I'm just making something up here), but submits a paper on Shakespeare and an analysis of a play rather than creating that connection between Shakespeare and colonialism and race studies, would that be seen as an issue? Would that be a glaring error? If the person is able to depict a working knowledge of Shakespeare and race studies and colonialism in their SOP yet only show a working knowledge of Shakespeare, his texts and the scholars in conversation over a specific text, would that be a problem? It's technically the same area but it has a different focus. 

 

(I am not working with Shakespeare, but I just thought that this may be a good example). 

I don't think that would be a glaring problem. Your writing sample isn't expected to be a chapter from your future dissertation. The fact that you are submitting a writing sample about the same author you're proposing to study in graduate school (in this hypothetical scenario) is close enough.

You probably want to contextualize your critical "shift" in your SOP. So, as you detail your future research plans, provide some kind of link between your writing sample and your chosen critical lens. Like, you might say that after writing this paper on Shakespeare, you wondered how cool it would be to link this discussion of England's class structure to the colonization of North America. (Kind of a dumb example, but something like that.)

And to be honest with you? Being willing to change and stretch yourself might be seen as an asset. The least successful grad students I've come across are the ones who came in with a dissertation project already mapped out and were unwilling to grow and change along the way. The most successful ended up changing authors, time periods, and continents. I know Americanists who started off Africanists and film scholars who ended up doing early modern. But ...many of the people I knew who went to grad school proposing to convert their undergrad thesis into a dissertation are still in grad school. So, demonstrating versatility in more than one critical area could work in your favor.

Edited September 5, 2016 by Bumblebea

[Caien]

Some thoughts re the matchiness question. I actually got some advice on this exact matter from someone on an adcomm at a top 10 department this past year. This is paraphrased a bit, but they said that the SoP and writing sample should work together and point in the same direction, as it were. That the research questions you propose in the SoP should 'in one way or another' be manifest in your writing sample. I'd quote the whole thing, but I'm not sure if that would be frowned upon since it was a personal mail from an adcomm member? They were keeping it vague themselves in order to not be unethical.

Most of the general advice seems to be to preferably submit a sample in your proposed area of interest. I have one fairly mundane essay (an A+, but just written in response to a set question) in my exact area of interest, a close reading with zero theoretical framing, and which to be honest brings nothing really new to the table. However my dissertation is on a contemporary novel that very well demonstrates my theoretical leanings and research interests, as well as being the first ever academic study of the text in question and is just generally a much stronger work. I emailed a few graduate admissions officers with this info and the response was always to pick the strongest sample and the one that best represents you as a scholar, so while its a bit nerve-wracking to have to lean on a sentence or two in the SoP to convince the adcomm you can do work in a temporal field without any evidence to back it up, I think in certain cases its actually the better option.

As an aside, in the UK they are actually quite strict on the writing sample being in the same temporal/geographical research area as the thesis proposal. Both Oxford and St Andrews state it explicitly on their website.

In the case of the OP, and this is just my feeling from brief emails with my own professors and graduate admins, I wouldn't say there's any need for your writing sample to match the SoP very specifically. As a few other posters have said, you'll be expected to grow, and it might be for the best not to seem like you have only one very narrow interest.

Finally, hope its okay if I jump in with a related question, there seems to be some advice out there about the writing sample needing to engage with prior/existing scholarship on a text. In my case, there is none (on the novel itself I mean), is there a possibility this may be an issue in terms of not showing engagement with previous scholarship?

[Bumblebea]

4 hours ago, Caien said:

 

Finally, hope its okay if I jump in with a related question, there seems to be some advice out there about the writing sample needing to engage with prior/existing scholarship on a text. In my case, there is none (on the novel itself I mean), is there a possibility this may be an issue in terms of not showing engagement with previous scholarship?

That's something you should probably ask your prof about. However, I don't think that "prior scholarship" necessarily means "scholarship about this particular text." Obviously if you're the first person writing about this novel, then there won't be any formal peer reviewed articles out there. But I assume there would be scholarship on the author more generally, or scholarship about this particular topic. Like, say you're thinking about examining a recent novel that concerns the Middle East. I assume you'd look at the scholarship surrounding similar recent novels and give some background about the direction this scholarship has taken. 

[Caien]

20 hours ago, Bumblebea said:

That's something you should probably ask your prof about. However, I don't think that "prior scholarship" necessarily means "scholarship about this particular text." Obviously if you're the first person writing about this novel, then there won't be any formal peer reviewed articles out there. But I assume there would be scholarship on the author more generally, or scholarship about this particular topic. Like, say you're thinking about examining a recent novel that concerns the Middle East. I assume you'd look at the scholarship surrounding similar recent novels and give some background about the direction this scholarship has taken. 

Yes, this is sensible. I think I'm in an irrational phase of the stress cycle. Keep calm and carry on.

[AnimeChic101!]

Thank you all for the advice. I've decided to use the paper that I was originally going to use. I'll decrease it to 15 pages, add in about 2 paragraphs and then tighten the language a bit.

 

I'm also going to run it by my letter writers and see what they think.

 

Thanks!

[rojano]

So guys, it wouldn't be necessary for the writing sample to be in line with the prpposed thesis? And should we be specific about what we're gonna do in phd or is it subject to change?

[knp]

On writing samples, a summary of my own experiences and wisdom gleaned from the crowds here:

• You shouldn't be able to use your exact writing sample as a finished chapter of your dissertation. If you're that sure of your research project, you're cutting yourself off from room to grow. (You might then benefit from the UK PhD system where you enter and then start research pretty much right away. Not my area of expertise, though.)
• But allowing room to grow, the closer it is to your proposed topic, the better (especially in the literature fields: I have gotten an impression it's a bit more flexible in most fields of history and art history).
• It is never necessary that your writing sample be in line with your proposed project. Sometimes you might just not have anything in line with the proposed project, so you do your best with what you've got. This is not an automatic disqualification, and sometimes people get in with applications like this.
• However, in the ideal case, especially in the literature fields, you want your writing sample to be located on a clear trajectory that it shares with your proposed project. If it's a couple steps earlier in your scholarly evolution, that's fine. But if it represents a different offshoot of your work, where you tried out a different direction entirely before coming to your project idea, that's not so good. It might not be an exact match, but it should help give a sense of where you're interested in going.

Specificity*:

• You should be specific about what you will do in your PhD, and you should expect it to be subject to change.
• PhDs and research academia more generally are very friendly to people changing projects.
  • This is how one could describe the career of most research professors. When they finish one book (or journal) project, they find a new one. It is in this way that you can publish enough to be hired and make tenure and afterwards just keep participating in the norms of the career. One can never have a career that has a research component with only one idea that never changes. (Even social theorists who really do just get stuck on One Thing will generally apply it to different cases over the course of their careers.)
• However, research academia is not friendly to people who don't have projects.
• The way I conceptualize the SoP, then, is not as a contract locking you into a project. I am personally expecting to evolve through 4-5 ways of framing my project and shifting its subject (although I think I am pretty locked onto its 3-4 central issues) over the course of the next 7-8 years. (Hello from anthropology, where PhDs take forever!) I'm three weeks into my PhD and I've already gone through one conceptual shift since applying.
• So what are you doing instead, if not proposing your eventual dissertation? You're drafting the project you are interested in pursuing at this point in time. That project will most likely fade and fall away and get overtaken by your next project, and the one after that, and the one after that—whether that transition happens in the course of working on it, or just after you publish the thing and you need something else to do. But you're not floating still while you wait to find a direction; you're following a path in one direction until you find another direction to take.

*This is assuming you are considering a career with some research expectations, i.e., a job in the more selective three-quarters (or so) of all four-year American institutions; although I've loved teaching community-college-type pools of students and used to work with a lot of alt-ac professionals in my museum job, right now, just starting my own PhD, they aren't my primary orientation. So I can't speak with any sense on how to use a PhD primarily to train yourself for either of those careers.

Edited September 10, 2016 by knp

[Dr. Old Bill]

Some excellent points there, @knp. I have nothing to add -- just saying "thanks" for a great post.