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cridamour · 2006 July 26th, 08:33 PM

Hi there! Good to hear that I'm making myself useful.
About the writing sample, I actually wrote a new one, especially for the applications. The Belgian educational system doesn't require a lot of papers and I studied foreign languages rather than literature in college, so I didn't have any useful papers from that period. I had some from my MA in American Studies but all in subfields I really had no interest in continuing to work on. So, I contacted one of my professors from that program who had a PhD in comp lit from Harvard (a rarity in Belgium, I can tell you!) to ask him for a couple of suggestions for a 20 paper. I gave him some general areas that interested me and he sent back some suggestions of authors and directions in which to think of taking the papers. He afterwards also proofread my paper, gave me some suggestions and that was that. I spent quite some time on the research, but I had decided not to work between September and January in order to focus on my applications (yes, all 16 of them and a couple of independent scholarship applications).
I know that for Brown, I was lucky that my interests perfectly matched one of the professors whom I had also contacted beforehand. (this can be a good idea) It's really hard to say what makes the difference between an admission and a rejection and there is no one single reason, but at Brown (for comp lit), they told me they spent a lot of time going through the SOPs and that that is really a crucial part of the application.
So, if you have got the time and you don't have a paper you think is adequate, it's not too crazy to write a new one. If you think you might want to continue using legal history and such in your research, you can work on one of the papers from law school and change the focus to make sure it's a lit paper. Doing this, however, does put you immediately in a certain catergory of interest, that of "law and literature" (instead of e.g. "medicine and lit", "psychoanalysis and lit", "philosophy and lit", ...), which means you'll have to start looking for professors with an interest in this subfield.
Just some more food for thought.
Talk to you later!

2006 July 26th, 08:33 PM	#31 (permalink)
cridamour Providence-bound! Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Providence, RI Posts: 3,394	Hi there! Good to hear that I'm making myself useful. About the writing sample, I actually wrote a new one, especially for the applications. The Belgian educational system doesn't require a lot of papers and I studied foreign languages rather than literature in college, so I didn't have any useful papers from that period. I had some from my MA in American Studies but all in subfields I really had no interest in continuing to work on. So, I contacted one of my professors from that program who had a PhD in comp lit from Harvard (a rarity in Belgium, I can tell you!) to ask him for a couple of suggestions for a 20 paper. I gave him some general areas that interested me and he sent back some suggestions of authors and directions in which to think of taking the papers. He afterwards also proofread my paper, gave me some suggestions and that was that. I spent quite some time on the research, but I had decided not to work between September and January in order to focus on my applications (yes, all 16 of them and a couple of independent scholarship applications). I know that for Brown, I was lucky that my interests perfectly matched one of the professors whom I had also contacted beforehand. (this can be a good idea) It's really hard to say what makes the difference between an admission and a rejection and there is no one single reason, but at Brown (for comp lit), they told me they spent a lot of time going through the SOPs and that that is really a crucial part of the application. So, if you have got the time and you don't have a paper you think is adequate, it's not too crazy to write a new one. If you think you might want to continue using legal history and such in your research, you can work on one of the papers from law school and change the focus to make sure it's a lit paper. Doing this, however, does put you immediately in a certain catergory of interest, that of "law and literature" (instead of e.g. "medicine and lit", "psychoanalysis and lit", "philosophy and lit", ...), which means you'll have to start looking for professors with an interest in this subfield. Just some more food for thought. Talk to you later! _ _ _ _ SIG _ _ _ _ Brown, here I come!