[MUSIC] Hi, in this module, I'm going to share some thoughts about preparing your research proposal or writing samples as part of your application for post-graduate study. Again, I'll be sharing some thoughts that I have after many years spent on admissions committees, both at my current institution and my previous institution. So some of these may be personal, and they might not be the same as what you might hear from somebody else. But I hope there are things that you will keep in mind as you prepare your research proposal or your writing sample. So most postgraduate programs, especially research-based programs will require either a research proposal or a writing sample as part of the application that's separate from the personal statement. Again the personal statement is really about you and how the program will help you fulfill your goals and advance your career. The research proposal, or the writing sample, is to demonstrate that you have what it takes to succeed in a post graduate program. And so as I said, the writing sample, especially, or the research proposal, is especially important for research-based programs, because they are looking for people who have some demonstrated capacity to work independently. And one of the best pieces of evidence for that will be in the writing sample or the research proposal. So when you pick your writing sample to include as part of your application, or you prepare your research proposal, then you want to do so with some care. You want to put your best foot forward when you submit your application. Relevance to the themes of the program is especially important. So, most of the time, if you're applying to a particular program, maybe in sociology, or economics, or something, you want to find a writing sample, maybe some paper that you've done previously, that is in deed relevant to that discipline, as opposed to something that has nothing to do with it at all. Again, you're using the writing sample or the research proposal to showcase on one hand your ability or at least your potential to conduct independent research. And you also want to show that you have some fit for the program and that you have at least some basic prior training that means, that whatever program you go into will not have to start from scratch in terms of training you. So, if you're writing a research proposal, then the research proposal should demonstrate mature understanding of the concerns, the paradigms, the data, the methods of the discipline. So again, it should reflect some prior exposure. Now, this will be easier to write if your UG major was directly relevant to the post-graduate program to which you're applying. Or alternatively, your thought program is directly relevant. Now, even though programs may expect admitted students to change their interests after they start the program, they will want the proposal to be realistic. Again, for what it informs the program about the potential of the student. So people often change the research interest after they start a program, the proposal that you may submit as part of your application may not be a contract. The program may not force you do follow up and do that exact subject or topic once you're in the program. Rather it is used as away of evaluating your fitness for graduate study, your adequacy of your prior training and your capacity for independent thinking. So a proposal, now even though it, again it may change. You may go on and do something difference once you're in a program. It should be realistic in a sense that it should be something that you as a student could expect to complete in the course of the program, because you need to show that you have a mature understanding of what the program is about. Now, the typical elements of the research proposal. We're going to recap what we talked about actually in a previous lecture, I'll just go through this very quickly. But you want to talk about the aims of your research. What are the broad goals, what's the question you're trying too address? What are the expected impacts and significance? So, why is it important that the research be done? How is it going to advance the field? You'll need a background or a literature review that shows again that you have some prior training, adequate exposure to the key literature within the field. You have to have some discussion of methodology. How are you going to actually analyze the data that you collect, qualitative or quantitative, to address the topic in which you're interested. And finally, I want to talk about the data that you're going to use. So these are all things that we talked about in a prior lecture, but I'm just recapping them. These are all elements that should be in a research proposal, that you submit as part of your application to a graduate program. Now, some considerations to keep in mind. One is that, your research proposal should make it clear that you have a question in mind. So you want to link what you're doing to the concerns of the discipline, the field. And you also want to make clear that you're not simply trying to prove something. That you have already decided is true, so I saw a lot of applications like this already years where, somebody applying to a PhD program, and already decided that something was true. That they already knew the answers, and their idea of the PhD program was to give them the tools that they needed, to at some level prove to somebody else something that they already thought was true. So they almost thought of the PhD or research-based program almost like a law program, where they're giving you the tools that you need to convince somebody else of something that you've already decided is true. In fact, we don't necessarily do our research because we think something is already true. We may have a hypothesis. When we conduct our research we're supposed to keep an open mind and admit to the possibility that our expectations may not bear out. So if you sound like you've already figured out all the answer and you just need a PhD program. To give you some training and statistics so that you can go out and convince other people of the righteousness of your beliefs. That's not going to go over very well. Purely exploratory studies are also unlikely to be compelling as part of a research proposal. So a proposal in which you want to just go out and look at something that you think is really cool, and learn more about it without some sense of question, without some sense of a hypothesis. Again that's not going to be very compelling. You're going to be spending several years in a research-based program, and people will want to see that you can actually formulate a question based on some expectations or hypothesis, before you go out and start doing research. Advocacy will not usually go over very well. So, when we see proposals where people actually, again at some point, they've decided that they want to fight for the rights of a particular group or they want to advance some cause, and they think the whole point of a Master's or a PhD is to help them make a case for some group that they're interested in to help, bring understanding to some particular group. That generally isn't going to go over well because that's not what research is about. It maybe entirely fine as something to do but it's not something that you typically do in graduate school. Similarly things that sound like journalism will not go over well. This relates the idea of avoiding proposals for purely exploratory studies. So if your proposal seems to suggest that you're just going to go out and spend some time, six months a year, two years studying some phenomenon that you find interesting. But about which you have real no priors, you have no expectation or no sense of question, that's not going to be as compelling as a proposal where you actually lay out some kind of hypotheses, some kind of expectations and you talk about how you're going to test them. Now, sometimes, in fact, commonly, for North American applications, you'll be asked to include a writing sample and perhaps not submit a research proposal. So the writing sample that you attach to your submission should showcase your ability to conduct research. So a term paper, a final project, a senior thesis that includes a research component is appropriate, especially if it's related to the topic of the program to which you are applying. Generally essays are probably less compelling. You may write beautifully but if an essay is simply an opinion piece which doesn't showcase your ability to research, that may not do as good of a job as convincing an admissions committee, as a research piece that really show cases that you have some potential for conducting independent research. Now, sometimes the writing sample sometimes be in an area unrelated to the program to which you are applying, but I would generally discourage you from doing that. Generally try to find something that is related to the program to which you are applying. So if you're applying to an economics degree, then don't submit something that you wrote for a anthropology course and vice versa, unless you can really argue that there is some connection there. So overall, your research proposal or your writing sample are going to be important elements in determining whether or not you're accepted to especially a research-based program. So it's especially important that you think carefully about these before you send them in.
