Writing a new writing sample

[lit_nerd]

Hello GCers! This is the first thread I've ever started, so go easy on me!

Maybe this has been asked somewhere on the forum before, but what are your opinions on writing a new writing sample from scratch? Many of the schools' websites I have read have asked that your writing sample be from a honors or masters thesis or from an upper-level English course. However, the three papers of which I am most proud (and that meet the length requirements) are not necessarily related to the subject I would like to research. As a secondary question, how important is it to match my SOP with my writing sample? I have a few really good essays (one that has already been through a serious re-write process) that I would love to send out, but I feel a bit apprehensive about moving forward with my rewrite process until I know for sure that I shouldn't be spending my summer creating a new piece of writing that is totally in line with my research interests. 

[fuzzylogician]

Disclaimer: non-English-specific advice here. 

The most important goal of the writing sample is to show your research ability and your writing skills. It's not as crucial that the paper be on the topic you want to study in graduate school, but it does matter that it's within your discipline so that there should be readers on the adcom and in the department who can evaluate it. It's generally safer to submit an existing piece of work that's been graded by a professor, where you can integrate his/her comments into the work. That also means that one of your LOR writers can address your writing sample directly and praise it, where relevant. Writing something new from scratch is more dangerous, unless you can get feedback from a professor on your work. But as long as you make a strong, sustained, and well-research argument, it shouldn't matter that it's on a different topic than your current interests. 

[echo449]

I basically did what you're asking about. My advisor saw one very early draft and gave me extensive feedback, but he never saw anything near the final product when I sent it out. I don't know if I recommend doing what I did, if you can avoid it. It led to a lot of stress for me, even though it did pay off in the end. If your good writing is in the same field that you're applying in (if not the methodology), then you should just use that. 

[cowgirlsdontcry]

5 hours ago, lit_nerd said:

Maybe this has been asked somewhere on the forum before, but what are your opinions on writing a new writing sample from scratch? Many of the schools' websites I have read have asked that your writing sample be from a honors or masters thesis or from an upper-level English course.

Basically what the others have said is true. Applying for the position from the POV of an undergrad, you won't be expected to have settled on the area you will eventually end up in. Find the paper you like best, and talk to one of your professors (perhaps the one you wrote it for originally) about how to rewrite it for your WS. You will probably need several rewrites. Because you have not settled on an area of research, you will need to show some general tendencies towards certain areas of literature in your SOP. They need to know this with regard as to how you will fit into their program. When contacting possible recommenders, include copies of your WS, SOP and CV. If they agree to write a LOR for you, you can figure they may make suggestions about your package. You don't say whether your are applying for MA, Ph.D. or both. I'm writing from the standpoint of being a master's student when I applied to Ph.D. programs. MA requirements may be slightly different. When I applied for my MA school, I only applied as an inside undergrad applicant, so it was much different than applying to Ph.D. programs.

Edited June 19, 2017 by cowgirlsdontcry

[Keri]

I did this. I've been out of school for five years and didn't have any of my old papers to share or fix, so I wrote a completely new one on a topic that interests me but is still similar enough to my future MA program goals. Writing it and doing all the research wasn't the difficult part, the editing was! I've edited it a couple times now, and gotten feedback from multiple people (a professional editor, a graduated English master's student, and a future law student.) It was a bit stressful though so I would suggest you try an old paper first before going this route. I don't think your WOP and research interests have to align perfectly, but as fuzzy said, it should be in the same discipline. Good luck!

[lit_nerd]

Thank you all for the insights. I'm applying for both PhD and MA programs. Whatever I do, I will probably need to expand heavily upon my favorite essay, because it is only 12 pages currently. Some schools specifically ask for a sample that is 15-20 (Vanderbilt even asks for 25 pages). In the case of a school like Vanderbilt, do you think that submitting a 15 page writing sample would signal a weak applicant? Should I try to expand enough that I have a 25 page sample for their application? 

[echo449]

Many of the papers you will write in coursework will be 20 pages, so I would strongly consider expanding your work to at least 20 pages so you can demonstrate your capability to make a longer argument. Is there a portion of the paper that can be fleshed out theoretically? Is there historical background that could add nuance to your claim? Ask yrself questions like that to see where you could build a little more

[cowgirlsdontcry]

3 hours ago, lit_nerd said:

Thank you all for the insights. I'm applying for both PhD and MA programs. Whatever I do, I will probably need to expand heavily upon my favorite essay, because it is only 12 pages currently. Some schools specifically ask for a sample that is 15-20 (Vanderbilt even asks for 25 pages). In the case of a school like Vanderbilt, do you think that submitting a 15 page writing sample would signal a weak applicant? Should I try to expand enough that I have a 25 page sample for their application? 

I looked at Vanderbilt's requirements. They ask for a "maximum length - 25 pages." If you shoot for a WS that is in the 20 page length (paper itself-Works Cited additional pages), you won't have to make modifications for programs that require papers in the 15-20 page category. My WS was 20 pages (plus Works Cited). I used it for every program I applied to. I have heard that Vandy has a great Southern program. Just remember, it's stressful getting everything done and in great shape while you are still a student. Trying to alter the same paper multiple times to fit every scenario's max page length will be difficult on you. Find a happy medium.

[lit_nerd]

15 minutes ago, cowgirlsdontcry said:

I looked at Vanderbilt's requirements. They ask for a "maximum length - 25 pages." If you shoot for a WS that is in the 20 page length (paper itself-Works Cited additional pages), you won't have to make modifications for programs that require papers in the 15-20 page category. My WS was 20 pages (plus Works Cited). I used it for every program I applied to. 

This is great information to have, thank you so much for looking into this for me. I copied a lot of application info into a spreadsheet I have to stay organized, so I must not have transferred the part that says "maximum." I will get going on expanding my paper to be 20 pages!

[Dr. Old Bill]

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with anyone's advice here, but I've had a few professors caution me that it's far safer to go under the page limit than over. In other words, you can submit a 20-page paper to a program asking for 20-25 pages, but NOT to a program that asks for 10-15 (there aren't many of those...but there are some). Some programs ask for 15-20. I opted to submit an 18-page paper to every program, just to strike the happy medium for all.

[lit_nerd]

1 hour ago, Old Bill said:

I've had a few professors caution me that it's far safer to go under the page limit than over.

Thank you for addressing this, @Old Bill. I have concerns with a few requirements. I should really just email some people to ask what they mean, but UCSB asks for "suggested length [of] 10" and University of Florida asks for "about 15 pages." That length at UCSB sound pretty low, and I'm not even sure what to do with Florida's request. Is 18 about 15? Or do they mean 14-16?

[Concordia]

Practice obviously will vary-- for my history programs, one didn't even ask for a sample, figuring that if my recommenders couldn't say how wonderful it was they didn't have to bother.  

The other places asked for two samples (each max. 2.5k words), but said that a single paper of 5k words would also suffice.  I ended up choosing the juiciest 5k words from my master's thesis, trying to include a few things that my examiners particularly liked-- comments that my recommenders might have included in their letters if they were feeling lazy or kind.  An intro paragraph before each of two sections set the scene, making context a bit more obvious.

[Warelin]

4 hours ago, Old Bill said:

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with anyone's advice here, but I've had a few professors caution me that it's far safer to go under the page limit than over. In other words, you can submit a 20-page paper to a program asking for 20-25 pages, but NOT to a program that asks for 10-15 (there aren't many of those...but there are some). Some programs ask for 15-20. I opted to submit an 18-page paper to every program, just to strike the happy medium for all.

Curiosity strikes: Did you just use 1 writing sample? Is there any case that you would recommend having an additional sample ready just in case?

[Dr. Old Bill]

14 hours ago, lit_nerd said:

Thank you for addressing this, @Old Bill. I have concerns with a few requirements. I should really just email some people to ask what they mean, but UCSB asks for "suggested length [of] 10" and University of Florida asks for "about 15 pages." That length at UCSB sound pretty low, and I'm not even sure what to do with Florida's request. Is 18 about 15? Or do they mean 14-16?

Ten is ridiculously low, and I'm guessing they expect to receive sections of longer papers...unless they're one of those programs that tacitly prefers applicants with B.A.s, in which case more applicants will have recent work of that shorter length. But if the program is otherwise a good fit for you, then sending a selection of a longer paper probably makes the most sense. "About 15 pages" probably means 14-16, but I would hesitate to go much longer. 12-16 is more practical, I think. This is why 17-18 pages (technically 18.5, though I use a slightly larger font than Times New Roman) seemed like a good number to me; first of all, it felt like the right length for my WS in general (I'd expanded it from a 12-page paper), and second of all, I could justify that length for programs that wanted 20 pages, and could cut it down a bit (but not too much) for those that wanted 15 or fewer (of which there was just one that I applied to). As usual, there are many variables involved, so this might not work for everyone. I think the key is that it's your "best" writing, in light of the interests you propose in your SOP. For what it's worth, I always find it easier to add material than cut, though I got a lot better at the latter over the course of my M.A. -- one of those subtle skills you pick up along the way in graduate work.

11 hours ago, Warelin said:

Curiosity strikes: Did you just use 1 writing sample? Is there any case that you would recommend having an additional sample ready just in case?

I just used one, though I did give a lot of thought to using two...mainly because my initial plan was to use a different sample which would have positioned me in a slightly different subfield (still early modern poetry and drama, but a different perspective/methodology). Of the three professors I vetted (all of my letter-writers, incidentally), only one thought that I should use the paper I had initially planned on using...and fortunately, my advisor encouraged me to revise a paper I had written for her a year prior -- a paper I loved, on a topic I loved, but one that only received an A-, which made me think both the paper itself and the topic it explored weren't quite up to snuff. I'm immensely grateful that my advisor brought up that paper (with an amusingly cavalier "oh, I give most student papers A-minuses" when I mentioned it), because the revision process proved rewarding in its own right, and obviously bore fruit in terms of Ph.D. acceptances.

Personal digression aside, what I'm trying to get at in a roundabout way is that your sample should generally match the overall focus as expressed in your SOP. If you have a couple of different potential interests, and have found program matches for both, then by all means -- draft different SOPs and WSs that best fit each program. It's more work, and you will need to make sure your LOR writers know what you are doing (lest they write to program X about your impressive work on topic Y), but I've heard second-hand that it has worked for some.

Edited June 20, 2017 by Old Bill

[Bumblebea]

If your paper is truly your best, and you're really proud of it and want to send it, then make your SOP fit that paper. 

In other words, write your SOP so that it forms a bridge between your writing sample and your proposed interests. Or, if necessary, propose interests that line up with your best paper while making it clear you want to explore "other directions." Because to be honest with you, graduate programs are getting additionally picky these days. And while no one expects you to stick with the topic you proposed in your SOP, programs do generally want to see matching SOPs and writing samples. 

It's difficult to know how to advise you on this without knowing more about your work--does your potential writing sample have ANYTHING in common with your proposed interests? Is there critical/methodological overlap? Are the interests on the same side of the Atlantic but just in a different time period? Or are they in the same time period but from different countries? Are they the same genre? (Poetry? Prose? Essay? Play?) Could they be linked by media (periodical publication? visual text?)? 

Edited June 23, 2017 by Bumblebea

[lit_nerd]

On 6/23/2017 at 4:25 PM, Bumblebea said:

It's difficult to know how to advise you on this without knowing more about your work--does your potential writing sample have ANYTHING in common with your proposed interests? Is there critical/methodological overlap? Are the interests on the same side of the Atlantic but just in a different time period? Or are they in the same time period but from different countries? Are they the same genre? (Poetry? Prose? Essay? Play?) Could they be linked by media (periodical publication? visual text?)? 

My best paper is on a different time period than I'm interested in (on The Tempest, my intended area is 20th century American); however, it uses theory that I have some interest in (postcolonial theory and cultural studies). I'm considering reworking the essay to use the framework that I have in the essay and analyzing a 20th century American novel in the context that I analyzed The Tempest. 

[Bumblebea]

Those two areas of study (early modern and 20th-century American) are pretty far afield from each other, and I'm also not sure how you would "plug in" a 20th-century work to your paper about a Shakespeare play. This would be the perfect thing to ask a professor or advisor about, tbh. It occurs to me that you could make a good case for wanting to study how Renaissance tropes are reconfigured by 20th-century literature in ways that incorporate postcolonial issues. I mean, Caliban figures show up all over the place in the 20th century, so there's definitely a connection to be made. 

Obviously, an MA program is not going to care as much about matching SOPs/writing samples. But a PhD program (especially a very selective one like Vanderbilt) probably will. For an MA program, you just need to demonstrate that you can write, research, and analyze literature in ways that are compelling; for a PhD program, you need to demonstrate that you have some kind of vision and capacity for coming up with a dissertation project. More importantly, the program needs to know your proposed area of study because they tend to admit people by literary time period. Handing in a WS about Shakespeare while you're proposing to study contemporary American lit might confuse them. 

[jackdacjson]

On 6/26/2017 at 10:52 AM, Bumblebea said:

Handing in a WS about Shakespeare while you're proposing to study contemporary American lit might confuse them. 

This is true. However, if you're applying primarily as someone interested in doing postcolonial work, making it clear that your methodological interest trumps your temporal placement, I'm not sure it couldn't be made to work--especially if you were resolutely clear in your SOP. I tend to think that writing samples should align quite closely with the interests, methodologies, and periods focused on in the SOP. And so if you're asking whether the paper would help your application more if you "subbed" out The Tempest and replaced it with at 20th-century novel, using the same essay structure and making the same kind of argument, it's possible, but it might not have the same vim depending on the close readings you do. If you're asking whether you should analyze both The Tempest and a 20th-century novel in the same paper, I think it could probably be done well, but there are a lot of ways such a paper could go wrong. It's hard to say what a paper that hasn't been written yet will be like. But whatever you do, make sure that your WS is clearly and confidently explained in your SOP and therein connected to your research interests. It's that connection that I think is most key.

[Bumblebea]

44 minutes ago, jackdacjson said:

 if you're applying primarily as someone interested in doing postcolonial work, making it clear that your methodological interest trumps your temporal placement, I'm not sure it couldn't be made to work--especially if you were resolutely clear in your SOP. 

 

To be frank, in order to make the connection work you're going to need more than just overlapping methodology or an interest in applying a particular theory. First of all, "postcolonial methodology" is vague--in some ways it's the new historicism of its age. Second of all, The Tempest and the 20th-century American novel (I assume we're talking novels and not plays or poetry) are too far apart temporally, geographically, and generically that you would have to work very hard to justify the idea that writing about one sets you up to specialize in the other. 

That's why I suggested that the OP try to make specific intertextual connections between The Tempest and some more recent American work--because that would then justify turning in a writing sample about The Tempest. Instead of thinking about applying theory, maybe the OP could think about Renaissance afterlives in the US experience or something like that.

At the end of the day, English departments are still sorted by literary period, and in this sense the period about which you're writing trumps your other interests. A writing sample about The Tempest is probably going to get sent to the early modernist for evaluation, not the postcolonialist. (And most departments don't have someone who purely does postcolonial--instead they'll have someone who does U.S. ethnic or some kind of Anglophone-world lit. And those people are not going to be keen on reading a Shakespeare paper.) 

[a_sort_of_fractious_angel]

Everything written so far is fantastic advice - I just want drop a quick line in case my experiences can further help you, @lit_nerd.

I'm assuming you're applying to both PhDs and MAs (if I'm wrong, I apologize) - as others here have noted, the PhDs are going to want to see a dialogue between the two, but (from my lived experience) MA programs are less concerned with seeing a nuanced and rich dialogue between a powerful SOP and WS than with seeing two (perhaps not totally connected) pieces of writing that are strong and interesting and demonstrative of your growth potential.

Case in point, I submitted for my 1st round of apps a WS on Joyce and psychoanalysis (weird paper) and a SOP that was vague everywhere except in its dogged love for the unfashionable field of literary trauma studies (even weirder than the WS), and I was accepted to two MA programs. While my materials didn't speak to one another in any sort of direct way and weren't strong enough to get me into a PhD, they did get me a step closer. And there's nothing wrong with taking the MA as time to continue growing - I'm so, so, so glad I did, and I can recommend a fully-funded MA program to look at (if you're interested.)

I believe, too, that someone here (I'm sorry I can't recall who said this) suggested that if you REALLY love this WS you're submitting, you shape you SOP around it. I think that is a idea well-worth considering. If you know you can write intelligently and easily on a certain topic, it's sort of pragmatic to "pick" that topic to spend 5-7 years working on. I am not suggesting, of course, that you pick a topic that's not actually what you love. I'm more trying to say that, as a PhD, you'll be able to work with all the professors in the department (probably), freely apply to whatever conferences catch your eye, and shape your studies in a way that works for you. Thus, provided you speak a little toward your multiple areas of interest, you can perhaps make the bridge between these two areas during your studies (as opposed to within your application materials) - however, I'm not a PhD, so others here will know more about exactly how much wiggle room you'll have upon arrival.

Finally, I think somewhere on here the question of submitting multiple papers appeared - my only advice for that is, if you do it, alert your LWs and make sure they know what paper is going where. One of my previous LWs spoke about my WS in her recommendation and I'm guessing other profs do that, too. It'd be super awkward to have a LOR bragging about Paper A when you submitted Paper B (I'm sure you've already thought this out, but I had to say it.)

Finally, finally - there is a safety to sticking with a paper that someone else has seen (perhaps multiple times) - you might have more room to get more nuance, simply because you've been able to step away and come back more than you would with a brand new sample.