Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. Roger of Invisible America's avatar
  2. Roger of Invisible America's avatar
  3. Margaret Gilbert's avatar
  4. Margaret Gilbert's avatar
  5. John Rapko's avatar
  6. Roger of Invisible America's avatar
  7. Brian Kogelmann's avatar

Writing samples for PhD programs

Brian Leiter

A prospective PhD student writes:

I'm a prospective philosophy PhD applicant preparing my applications, and I just have two questions about the writing sample that I hope you and/or readers of your blog could illuminate on. 

1) There seems to be conflicting suggestions as to whether the writing sample(s) should match the applicant's interests. I wonder which suggestion is right.

On the one hand, Richard Heck writes on Brown University philosophy department's website: "the writing sample does not have to be connected, in any way, with the area or areas you think you most want to pursue in graduate school."  (https://www.brown.edu/academics/philosophy/application-advice)

On the other hand, Paul Weirich commented in a post on your blog: "The writing sample, besides demonstrating qualifications, shows whether the student's interests fit the department well."  (http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2010/10/ma-students-and-phd-applications.html)

The University of Chicago philosophy department's website seems to support Weirich's view: “Most often, [the writing sample is] a term paper written for a philosophy course — one that reflects your interests, that you put a lot of work into, that you did well on, and, above all, that you're proud of.” (http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/prospective/admissions.html)

2) UChicago philosophy department website says that writing samples of successful applicants will have been read by as many as 8-9 faculty members before they are admitted. Is this also true at other schools? (Whether it's true directly affects the choice of one’s writing sample — e.g. whether to submit a paper on a topic of general interest or a specialist topic; whether to avoid submitting a paper that makes an original contribution to a technical debate, whose originality may be overlooked by non-specialists; and so on.)

Heck's advice (surprise!) doesn't seem right to me–or it puts the point too strongly.  The writing sample should bear some relationship to subjects that you are going to mention in your personal statement as ones you may want to pursue.  The main evidence of a good "fit" with a department is how you describe your interests in the personal statement, but the writing sample should be related to one of those.  At most programs, to my knowledge, writing samples are only read by the admissions committee, which usually consists of just 3 or 4 faculty.  Chicago is unusual in circulating writing samples to faculty not on the committee but who work in the area.

It would be useful to hear from faculty who have recently done graduate admissions on these questions.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

3 responses to “Writing samples for PhD programs”

  1. Tim O'Keefe

    I agree with you on both of your points. It's far better to have a writing sample that demonstrates an applicant's ability to do good work related to one of their self-declared areas of interest rather than something out of area. Having something out of area isn't automatically disqualifying–after all, it can show that you're capable of doing good philosophical work in general, and people often switch their AOIs after entering a program. But programs are usually looking to balance their grad student body based on their interests and fit with the program, and if you're pitching yourself to us as a 'philosophy of mind' person, it will raise eyebrows if you've got a paper on Anselm's Ontological Argument.

    Now, an awesome writing sample out of area would be far preferable to a decent-but-not-particularly-inspired sample in area. But people applying to graduate programs shouldn't be in the position of having to make that choice–they should be looking at a range of strong papers they've already written, and then choosing one of them to do a ton more work on in order to transform it from a good class paper into a suitable writing sample. And it's that point where applicants would be well advised to favor papers to develop into their WS that are related to their areas of interest.

    Reply
  2. Graduate Student

    To give evidence for Prof. Leiter's point from the other side, I applied to grad school with a writing sample in philosophy of language, not one of the AOIs listed in my personal statement. I subsequently discovered that a department that accepted me had me in their spreadsheet with a primary AOI in philosophy of language!

    It all turned out okay for me, but I often wonder what happened to my application at the schools I applied to because they fit my AOIs but were not strong in language.

    Reply
  3. david chalmers

    the admissions process works differently at different places, but one common route to admission is to have strong support from a faculty member in your area who is enthusiastic about working with you. this route is especially central in departments where you have to have a designated supervisor before admission (common in europe and australia), but it is relevant in any admissions process where faculty input and enthusiasm plays a role. in many US departments, leading applications are circulated to faculty outside the committee (at NYU top-n writing samples are read by at least one specialist outside the committee as well as by everyone on the committee), and even in departments where that doesn't happen, area-driven enthusiasm of committee members can play a role. this route to admission is much more straightforward when your writing sample is the same area that you want to work in, because a writing sample in a different area will give faculty members in your intended area less evidence to drive their enthusiasm.

    even setting this route aside, some admissions committees will worry that a writing sample in area A provides less evidence than they would have liked about an applicant's capacity to work in area B (all the more so for very different areas — e.g. continental writing sample for analytic area or vice versa). that said, it's common for admissions committee (including NYU) to put much more weight on strength of writing sample than on area of interest (partly because areas can change), and it's quite common to be admitted in virtue of a strong writing sample regardless of area. so all in all, i'd agree with tim that other things being equal it's certainly better to have a writing sample close to the area of declared interest, but if your best work by far is in an different area, you may do better to use that work.

    —–
    KEYWORDS:
    Primary Blog

    Reply

Designed with WordPress