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Choosing a writing sample to submit with grad school applications

Brian Leiter

An undergraduate student writes:

I have a question that I would love to see addressed on your blog, if you think it would be appropriate. I'm preparing to apply to philosophy graduate programs, and I'm wondering how important it is that my writing sample be about a topic of current interest to philosophers. I have one paper about the effects that shifts in visual attention have on the phenomenology and intentional content of visual experience (a topic that has gotten a lot of attention in journals lately), and another paper evaluating the efforts of John Rawls and HLA Hart to reconcile retributivist and consequentialist justifications of criminal punishment. The latter paper involves more nitty-gritty analysis of arguments, and so I'd otherwise favor it, but it considers papers by Rawls and by Hart that were published decades ago. Does this matter?

My own view is that either of the proposed papers would be fine, and that the fact that a debate is au courant, as opposed to older, is of little significance.  The key thing is to submit a writing sample that demonstrates the clarity and intelligence of your written and dialectical skills well, and that is on some topic that is a reasonable fit for the department you are applying to.   Don't submit a paper in philosophical logic to a department with no one working in that area.  Don't submit a paper on phenomenology to a department with no one interested in that philosophical movement.  And so on.

What do readers think?  Signed comments will be strongly preferred.  Submit your comment only once, they may take awhile to appear.

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13 responses to “Choosing a writing sample to submit with grad school applications”

  1. A Facebook User

    I get the feeling that different evaluators vary a lot in what they look for, but still I suspect that getting involved in the most cutting edge debates is something they'd expect you to do in their program, not something they'd expect you to have done before coming. Leiter's advice certainly matches my own experience and what I've heard from others both about what they look for and what's worked for them. Send your best work, not your most up to date work.

    Reply
  2. Jordan Taylor

    I've been in contact with professors in three top-20 universities, and all of them have recommended that students consider submitting two samples – a primary and a secondary – showing talent in different areas, eg. early modern and philosophy of mind. However there was also emphasis on the idea that if one is of lesser quality than the other, just submit the one. If you're pretty much equally happy with both your papers, why not submit both? That way, different evaluators can pick which one to focus on according to their own specialities.

    If you have an idea of who you want to work with at your target institution(s), why not ask them directly for advice? Politely, of course…

    Reply
  3. Bill Blattner

    I have served on the Graduate Admissions Cmte at Georgetown on and off for a decade. I think that Brian pretty much hits the nail on the head. You want to send the paper that puts your best foot forward. You're not expected to be already engaged in cutting edge debates when entering grad school; you get drawn in in gad school, as Aaron notes above. I would, however, not strongly recommend sending two papers. Admissions cmte members have A LOT of papers to read, and they don't want to read two from a single candidate — esp. if they're moderate length to long — unless there's an exceptional reason for doing so. E.g., if you're interested in both European and Anglophone philosophy, it might be wise to send a paper on both, say, Husserl and mind-body eliminativism, in order to appeal to diverse sides of a dept. or cmte. And there's nothing wrong with having two papers in your quiver, to send to depts. with varying interests, as long as they're both strong.

    Reply
  4. Brandon Frank Terrizzi

    There is a very helpful link about this very topic here: http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2007/01/philosophy-grad-school-applications.html

    Reply
  5. Matthew Kramer

    On the general point, my views are the same as Brian's. On the specific point, the undergraduate student should certainly not think that a paper engaging with the arguments of Hart and Rawls is only of antiquarian interest. On the contrary, contemporary philosophers of criminal law still actively ponder and discuss those arguments. A contribution to their discussions from a bright student would be timely.

    Reply
  6. Skef

    Folks on committees can chime in here and correct me, but I have asked faculty in a few departments how it is decided who reads what, and the general response has been that each year 1-3 people will be the primary readers of undergraduate essays. The group members are not necessarily chosen to be distributed across philosophical areas. An essay is occasionally read by someone outside of that group, but only if it is of some unusual form, e.g. a piece on formal logic with lots of symbols.

    What this means is that you should not assume that your essay will be read by someone who works in the area it is written in. That it is is more likely to happen by coincidence than by design. So, even if you have a fabulous contemporary _result_, your readers may not realize it. (A fabulous _argument_ should, ideally,
    still stand out … ideally.) In turn, this might suggest concentrating your editing effort on form more than content, and choosing the essay that someone outside of your area is most likely to respond positively to. Of course, if your essay does happen to be read by someone in your area (and who is familiar with its sub-area), this advice may be misplaced.

    Other departments might be more elaborate in deciding who evaluates what essay. Perhaps some info will percolate out in this comment stream.

    Generally speaking, be wary of advice not given by the people in charge of the process in question, or not given in the spirit of communicating that process. Two essays might look like a good idea to the professor thinking "what would allow me to make this decision most accurately?" as she responds to your email, but less good to the professor assigned to evaluate your application who doesn't work in either area, and has another 30 essays to go.

    Reply
  7. Michael Kremer

    Some of this repeats what others have said, but here are my two bits. (Or six bits.)

    First, as Brian says, you should submit your best work.

    Second, what an admissions committee is looking for in an undergraduate applicant (this may be different for an applicant coming from an MA program) is the ability to think philosophically — to construct arguments, criticize arguments, anticipate objections and reply to them, make important distinctions, diagnose confusions, write clearly, recognize what is philosophically important and interesting, and so on. But this doesn't mean you should concentrate on form rather than content — you need to do both. They are hardly separable.

    Third, and this is where I disagree with Brian, I don't really think you should tailor your writing sample to the department you're applying to. Unless your writing sample is particularly specialized in an area like philosophical logic, so that you can't reasonably expect philosophy professors at a research university to be able to understand the field at all, there is no reason not to submit the same essay to every school. (But if you have a super-specialized essay like that you probably need a different one for your general application, and then might consider submitting the more specialized paper as a second sample to selected departments.) To work up several different essays for different schools is more work than it seems sensible to ask. But this means you do have to work on making your essay intelligible to the general philosophical reader.

    Fourth, you should only consider submitting a second writing sample if it strengthens the evidence of your philosophical ability provided by the rest of your application. In general the breadth of your interests should be clear from your statement of purpose and your letters of reference, and if one of the writing samples is noticeably weaker than the other this can raise concerns about your whole application. Basically the admissions committee is looking for a way to cut several hundred applications down to a list of 10-20 or so, and this means they are looking for reasons to eliminate applications. (In particular I usually find it unhelpful when students submit a 15-20 page paper and then a much shorter second writing sample. The second writing sample in such a case usually comes off as superficial and often can hurt the application.)

    Fifth, not all departments operate along the model described by Skef. In our department there is a smaller committee that makes a first cut, during which the writing samples are not given a careful reading, though they will be looked over briefly. But the writing samples of the surviving group (about 1/5 of the total applicant pool) are then read by members of the faculty as a whole, so that these writing samples are more likely to be looked at by someone (usually several people) with more than a passing familiarity with the field.

    Sixth and last: I always advise students to put more than usual care into the crafting of their introductions and conclusions. The busy admissions committee reader is likely to look at these first in order to get a quick assessment of the interest of a paper. And more generally edit your paper for a reader other than the professor who taught you the course for which you wrote the original paper (if that is its origin).

    BL COMMENT: One point of clarification: it's not that I think students should tailor their writing sample to the department, it's that I don't think they should be applying with a writing sample to departments where the sample won't be well-received by anyone on the faculty.

    Reply
  8. Kris McDaniel

    I would discourage applicants from trying to submit more than one writing sample. Make the one writing sample as good as you can make it. Get multiple rounds of feedback from your letter writers on the sample, and revise it multiple times in light of that feedback. Make that thing as polished as possible.

    I don't think most applicants can reasonably expect that their letter writers will give them multiple rounds of feedback on more than one sample, and I doubt that most applicants actually have the time to spend on revising and polishing two writing samples, especially since most applicants will still be undergrads taking classes while preparing their applications. So I suspect that an applicant who attempts to submit two writing samples will submit two samples each of which will likely be in worse shape than it would have been had the candidate focused only on that one sample.

    Reply
  9. Tom Hurka

    Two thoughts.

    I think your writing sample should be one that gets to the point quickly. Faculty on an admissions committee have many papers to read and they don't want to go through ten pages of turgidness before getting to something interesting. They want signs of philosophical ability from the start, even if it's just the ability to frame an issue clearly and accurately. So make sure your writing sample has a strong beginning.

    And even if you submit only one paper to each program, why not try different papers at different programs? Yes, you should send your best paper, but your judgement about which of your papers is best, and even your undergraduate teachers' judgement, is hardly infallible. Sending a couple of different papers to different programs protects you against a mistaken evaluation of your own writing — and we've all made some of those.

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  10. Anon grad student

    I recently finished my first year at a top-20. I also had a nice competitive fellowship, for what its worth.

    First off, I think Brian is right about tailoring your sample to specific departments. All of the programs I was admitted to (7/20) had faculty that were specifically interested in the topic of my sample; e.g., they had published in the same area or were currently working on it.

    Second, I submitted two samples, and I think it helped. One sample was in history (my main area), the other in phil mind. I attached a cover letter explaining that the papers illustrated different philosophical skills, and recommended which sections to look at from both paper. This isn't necessary in all cases, but if your best paper is in an area with a specific methodology (e.g., history, x-phi, continental), it won't hurt to have another paper where you show off more traditional, analytic skills.

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  11. David Sobel

    So, combining Brian and Kris's last points we get the recommendation that, other things equal, if one is choosing between two different papers as a writing sample, one should pick only one of them to work on for this purpose and pick the one that is in the more mainstream area where most departments are likely to have someone who feels competent to assess your work.

    Reply
  12. Potential graduate

    If one is planning to submit a v. specialized paper (e.g. a piece of philosophy of mind that engages heavily with the technical neuroscience literature) would it be sensible to submit a more traditional piece of philosophy as well, even if the department in question has a faculty member with the necessary specialized knowledge (e.g. Ned Block etc) on the off chance that they are not involved with the admissions process that year? Is this a situation in which two submissions is reasonable?

    Reply
  13. Alastair Norcross

    I have been on admissions committees at two different programs (Rice and Colorado), so I can share my experience on them. Other places may operate differently. First, as regards the size of the committee, both programs have about six members of the admissions committee each year. At Rice, this was about 50% of the faculty. At Colorado, under 25%. This means that, if you are submitting a particular paper because you think a particular faculty member will be interested in it, there is far more than an "off chance" that they won't even be on the committee, let alone be the person assigned to your file. So, echoing other advice, I recommend sending a paper that best shows your strengths as a philosopher, and is accessible to well-trained philosophers of all specialties.

    Second, as regards sending two different samples to the same place, I would advise against it. Almost certainly, only one will get read, and, again, almost certainly, it will be the shorter one. Many programs get several hundred applications a year. The last time I was on the admissions committee at Colorado, I had over 40 applications to read as a first cut.

    This brings me to my third point, length. I know that wasn't a topic of the original post, but allow me to give my advice on it anyway. You obviously want to send a paper that's long enough to demonstrate your ability, so unless you're Gettier, that means more than three or four pages. But you should be able to show what you're capable of in fewer than thirty pages. Remember, most professional conferences, including the APA, have about a 3000 word limit. I've seen plenty of impressive philosophy at APA colloquium sessions. You don't have to limit yourself to 3000 words, but I wouldn't go over 5000 words (about 17 pages), if you can help it. A shorter paper will get a more careful read. If you have written an honors thesis, or a master's thesis, of which you are particularly proud, don't, whatever you do, send the whole thing. Select the best standalone bit under 20 pages, and send that. If there isn't a standalone bit under 20 pages, come up with a completely different writing sample.

    Last, at Rice and Colorado (and many other places, I gather from talking to friends) the writing sample is far and away the most important part of your application. Almost everyone is some professor's "best ever" student. GRE scores really only matter when they're very bad or, perhaps, outstandingly good (pretty much perfect scores), except to university-wide fellowship committees. There's not much you can do about your GPA at this point. Your cover letter probably won't be read very carefully, and, even if it is, there's not much you can say to make yourself stand out (anyone can look up the department on the web and say that they're really enthusiastic about working with professors X, Y and Z who do really outstanding work). In my experience, almost all the arguing about whom we should make initial offers to, and where on the wait list to rank the others, has concerned the writing samples.

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