What should I provide for a writing sample?

Your writing sample should demonstrate your strengths in writing, research, and critical analysis—skills that will be directly applicable to academic work at HDS. You can choose to submit: 

  • An excerpt of an academic paper in any subject area within the humanities or social sciences. 

  • An adapted piece of professional writing. 

  • An original work that is based upon a topic that you are interested in studying here at HDS. 

You may reuse a previous work, especially if you feel that it best represents your academic writing abilities. Please provide an excerpt from a larger piece or edit a selection down instead of providing the entire piece and stay within the word limit. You may add a brief note providing the larger context for the piece you choose. Please note that footnotes, bibliographies, or works cited pages do not count toward the overall word limit.