All About Writing Samples

2026 Updates: We no longer have the chat function for on-demand career peer support, but you can bring your writing samples to our weekly pop-ins, or ask a career peer to review it anytime M-F between 9-5. 

Many applications ask you to submit a writing sample with your resume and cover letter. What should you send? Amy and Susan discuss your options, how to interpret what the hiring manager is looking for, and how to prepare in advance so that you're ready when the application (finally) opens.

Transcript

[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.]
Hello everyone. This is Amber Brown and Ahmar Ursani.

We are both GPSI career coaches, and we're here to provide a few updates and a refresh on our existing podcast series.

So some of our episodes use our old community name, but we want to clarify that our new community name is Government Policy and Social Impact.

Or you can just say GPSi, see for short.

We want to highlight our updated career engagement model as well in this episode because it helps us contextualize the work we do.

So I'm going to give you a brief overview of the stages, and you can see more in the show notes.

So it starts with understanding yourself, which is super important for reflection and visioning possibilities,

preparing to the actual search and apply process.

And then finally when you're actually engaging in your opportunity.

So you may also hear in some of our older podcast episodes, a reference to what's called a live chat.

And we wanted to make sure you noted that it's no longer in existence, but instead we have a different resource,

which we have various in-person drop in hours that we had that are GPS specific throughout the week.

And there was also a time that you can meet our career peers. Um, available Monday through Friday for on demand support.

Additionally, we no longer use canvas. All the resources have migrated to our GPS website.

A link again will be provided in the show notes. And our last technology update is we want to discuss Career link.

It's now handshake. So in handshake it's our one stop shop for career related events job and um, job and internship postings.

You can schedule your appointments there and more. And to close, we want to state that our annual Career expo now has a GPS specific focus day,

where employers from our industry come to you to discuss career options.

This, along with our annual Changemaker Summit, which brings local nonprofits to campus, helps you see how you can make an impact on our world.

So thank you so much for listening to this. If you have any additional questions, feel free to reach out to anyone on our team.

Hope you're having a good day. See you. Yeah. Thank you.

Welcome to the GPP podcast for budding politicos, policy wonks and advocates.

I'm Amy Heath Carpentier, and I'm Susan Craig.

As career counselors in Washington University's Career Center and co-directors of the Government and Policy Work Group.

We walk alongside burgeoning policy wonks, politicos and change agents as they chart their paths to change the world.

This podcast is for you if you're interested in hearing tips and techniques that will position you to find your place in the fast moving,

mission driven world of politics, policy and advocacy. In this episode, we're going to talk about writing samples.

If you've listened to our previous episodes, and I hope you have. We've talked about the resume and the cover letter,

the other piece of the application package that you're likely to need for jobs and

internships in the field of government policy and advocacy is a writing sample,

and the reason for this is your writing skills are probably the most valuable thing you bring to the table as an applicant.

Our independent research over the years, and our GPP alums tell us all the time that writing is the most important skill in their work.

Having a good writing sample is a concrete way to prove that you have something to contribute, and that you can articulate it.

It's worth taking the time to demonstrate that you understand how important the skill is, and you have it now.

Don't forget the cover letter is also a writing sample, and we encourage you to spend some effort getting that fine tuned,

because they're probably not even going to look at your writing sample unless you've hooked them with a great cover letter.

So once you've got that polished, it's time to turn to the writing sample.

Now, sometimes the employer will provide you with some parameters like a page limit or a topic,

but often it's really vague and it's up to you to decide what you want to use and how much of it to send.

So here is how you should think about the writing sample. Most students will just pick a paper they've written and gotten a good grade on.

You've spent a ton of time on the other materials and you're just out of time.

Right, Susan? you're just like, what can I do? Just get it over. Right. Let's get it over with.

And it's partially because the employer just hasn't provided you any direction, so it seems like it's good enough.

And let's be honest, it is right. Don't sweat it if you've done this, um, but you can do better.

So here's how the term writing is very vague, and there are many types of writing.

For example, the intelligence assessments that I wrote for policymakers are really different than what you might do, Amy, for your academic journals.

Right, right. Which is different from the tech writing I did when I was in my early 20s.

Now, sometimes that think tanks, they do write for an academic audience.

So one of your academic papers for a class would be the right choice.

But we hate to break it to you, don't we, Susan, after the years of writing papers for your professors,

truth is that they focus on the quality of your argument and how it builds over the course of a relatively long paper,

rather than on the straightforwardness, precision, and the writing style.

They mainly read those papers alongside many, many more.

In a very short span of time, so they don't always pick up on the subtleties.

Their purpose is primarily to assess your learning. This is not how the professional world communicates in the government policy and advocacy world.

Writing takes the form of memos, op eds, constituent letters.

What else? Susan? Uh, Grand proposals, presentation slide decks.

Oh, slide decks. Those are fun policy briefs, press releases, blog posts, even tweets and emails.

Right. Exactly. So the best writing sample is one of these formats.

Now, you might be saying to yourself, I've never written a memo or an op ed before,

and that sounds like just another assignment on my already extensive to do list.

And it is, and it may not be worth the time and effort it would take to craft such a finely honed writing sample for every application.

But if your dream job is a press assistant and you attach a press release as your writing sample.

The employer will know immediately that you can hit the ground running.

You understand what the job entails, and you can do it without a lot of hand-holding.

And that's a great way to demonstrate your interest, your seriousness, and ultimately your crappiness.

You can learn on your feet. It sure does.

Now, you may be applying to a position that doesn't have such a clear cut writing style, or you can't really discern it, but you can still dig around.

Do they have a blog or some publications on their website? They probably do.

Look at their social media feed. What does that look like? I, Amy, once had a student who turned in an academic paper into a blog.

She she reformatted it and she sent it to the place she was applying.

She not only got the internship, but they published her blog. That's fantastic.

I know we've seen a lot of these kinds of, you know, transformations, and they can really happen fairly easily with things you've already written.

So we encourage you to be creative here. Lean into the job a little.

Pretend that you're doing it. Show them you have what it takes, if nothing else.

It will make your writing sample stand out. Think about the poor person stuck reading academic papers all day.

Who don't? Who's that's not their job, you know, to read academic papers all day.

They will appreciate a little creativity for sure.

Now, the other important aspect of the writing sample in the government policy and advocacy space is the content.

If the organization is issue oriented and most of them are it, it's really in your interest to submit a writing sample on that topic.

So if you're applying to the World Resources Institute, for example, you don't want to submit a paper on systemic racism.

Now, you may not have a paper on international sustainability issues, but you likely have something to do with the environment.

And if you don't and it's really what you're into, then maybe it's time to figure it out and write something on that topic.

Write or just bridge that paper on systemic racism with one on environmental racism, you know?

Yeah, build on your strengths.

So we have a resource that will attach to this podcast with some tips on how to turn an academic paper into a policy memo.

You don't have to start from scratch.

Those a papers or their theses you're in the middle of doing are great starting points, but don't feel constrained by these things.

You don't have to submit a prior piece of work that's been graded by a faculty member.

And here's one last piece of advice that will offer.

If you're not going to build something specific for the application, and you're going to submit a paper that you've already written for a class.

Take a minute to provide some context for it. What was the class you wrote it for?

What was the assignment? If you're just submitting a portion of it, what are you leaving out?

Why is this the section you're including? Give them the explanation.

They need to understand what they're reading and know that even if they say to include a five page paper,

they're pretty unlikely to read all five pages. So make sure that that first paragraph is really good.

You don't want them to spend that time that they're reading that paragraph thinking, what am I reading?

Give them the setup so that they can be saying, oh, this is interesting. Exactly.

So there's this way in which, you know, when you submit a paper for an assignment,

it's there's kind of a contract that your professor is going to read the thing. That's not always the case here.

They could get through the first page and that would be it.

Um, so make sure to have it proofread. By the way, uh, Susan and I are too swamped to be your proofreader.

Our career peers can help via the chat function on the Career Center website.

Or you can set up an appointment with the writing center to have them look at it.

Even having a friend read it. Or worst case scenario. And I highly recommend this.

Print it out. Read it aloud slowly to yourself to help you find errors.

That is a great way to do it. Make yourself be your proofreader, and it is okay to submit something that was coauthored as long as you explain that.

I've had students submit articles that were written with another student. This is not disqualifying.

Very little writing outside of academia is ever really written by just one person.

So just be sure that you give credit where it's due, and you can use the highlight function to demonstrate your contributions,

or just put something up at the top again to provide that context. Lastly, for those of you who are just starting on your journey in this space,

think about ways you can build a portfolio of writing samples that will work for you as you're applying to jobs and internships.

Consider writing for Stud Life or Washu Political Review,

or even submitting a letter to the editor of the paper, the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, or your local paper.

You could start your own medium site, or take the opportunity to steer class projects in a direction that will serve this purpose.

We both teach classes that require students to write policy memos, so this is a great way to meet this need if you're being strategic.

All right. So with all that said, you should be ready to hit send on those applications.

If you want to learn more about references and recommendations, we'll be doing our next podcast on that topic.

Until then, keep working to imprint your world.