How Do I Develop Writing Samples for a Grad School Application?
I’m inspired by this display of determination, to take the time to request the feedback and take it to heart and then come and ask how to actually do what they suggested, which I’m assuming is updating or strengthening your writing samples. Your focus and resolve is something I hope you take the time to celebrate and admire within yourself.
You do in fact have all the options you listed above, including the journal route, plus some more!
It is possible to submit to academic peer reviewed journal even without being affiliated with an institution or being enrolled. If you take this route, I would suggest researching the popular publication spots in your field and going to those journal’s pages. Each journal will have different lengths and types of papers you can submit and different formats. It’s much easier to write the paper to the specific journal than to write a paper and then have to adapt it (coming from my personal experience!).
I would take the time to consider other ways of displaying analytical rigor though, since the academic peer review process can be long and arduous. And it might not align with reapplying for this upcoming application cycle.
Are there popular magazines or less formal publications that are frequently read amongst your peers or people in that field? It may be a shorter and less bureaucratic way to showcase your ‘publishability’ in the academic sphere without having to deal with journals and their timelines.
However, it may not be that the write samples need to have the stamp of publication on them - since I’m not sure exactly what the feedback was, explore the variety of options below and you can chose which path(s) feel the most doable and sustainable.
If you have a personal website to display your other writings (policy briefs and non-profit reports, assuming they’re not just internal documents), you might look into putting up a blog there. This allows you to build ‘authority’ in the public sphere, which can be helpful in your academic work too, and the blog gives you the advantage of choosing how you want to write and show your analytical rigor. If you don’t have website, consider a platform like this - Substack - where you can do the same thing, write at your own pace, in your own format, on the topics that matter the most to you and would be relevant to your application.
Another one of your ideas was opinion pieces, and I think that could be another great way to showcase your writing and knowledge of your field. You could pitch it to journals, newspapers, magazines, online writing websites, wherever you see fit. How I might encourage you go to about deciding what is the right fit is to think about the audience you want to write to - how much do you want to define and explain things (more for a general publication) or how much you want to show a citation lineage because this can demonstrate a foundational knowledge of the field (more for a journal) or how much do you want to ground it in your day to day experience, if that’s possible (more towards a local newspaper).
One piece of advice I’ll give you for the writing samples is to think about them as a collection, to show your ability to communicate to different audiences. There’s a lot of discussion about impact in academia these days, how to get knowledge and research outside of the ivory tower, so your ability to showcase your analytical ability while also being able to communicate the results to a wide range of people / different levels of understanding in your field can be a huge benefit to your application.
I also want to slightly discourage you for writing just for the application because the work you put in deserves to be recognized and shared outside of a decision to admit you into their program or not. There’s the possibility of frustration or resentment coming up to write it only with the application in mind, as you already have a full time position and have limited time / energy / resources. However, if you feel you’ll create the most aligned work by writing to the application, then do. Just consider how you might be able to repurpose and reshare it too!
Most importantly, the writing samples are demonstrations of your words, your understandings, your conceptualizations and that (usually, though I can’t speak for all) matters much more than where the writing lives (journal, magazine, blog, etc). If one type of writing, or one setting was most important to them, they would have specified that you need to submit an essay or a manuscript or a policy brief for the application, but because they didn’t, it’s most likely indicating that the content matters most above all.
Focus more on what you write versus where it needs to belong - as many of these options require pitching / being approved by others, which is not in your control in the way the writing you do is.
A brief point towards the ‘how’ to do this while working full-time, I’d suggest thinking about when you’re most energized (morning, afternoon, evening, on the weekends) and carving out dedicated time to this project, whether that’s an hour before work or an hour after dinner or a couple hours in a cafe on a Sunday. I don’t suggest allowing it to consume every waking minute that you’re not at your full time job, because that’s a recipe for burnout and exhaustion. But do work with your body, your rhythms, your usual pockets of time to take this on a little at a time.
Research and analytic work can be exhausting and a complete brain drain so please take cues from how you feel, including when you sit down and want to write but your attention is elsewhere or you’re constantly being interrupted. It’s also important to realize you may make a connection during cooking dinner or you hear something on TV that sparks something - follow those threads of energy however you can, recording a voice memo, pausing the TV to write a bit, keeping notes in a journal in your bag, and so on.
How you get this done is entirely up to you, your life and schedule and energy, and what settings feel best for your writing. There are a lot of choices for you to make, but experiment and allow yourself to pivot or change because you have that flexibility and freedom right now as you develop your writing samples.
Best of luck to you!
Til next Sunday,
Dr. Sydney Conroy
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