3

I am submitting a paper for graduate school application in philosophy. Among the items required, a writing sample. The sample relates directly to the field and to the potential supervisor's research area as well. The paper DOES reconstruct a philosophical problem for a particular philosopher, and it comes with something new for sure. However, the references I used and footnotes were about 57 and 70 respectively. The footnotes addressed a lot of issue and worked as a linkage to contemporary studies in the field. For the references, I couldn't help it.

Are those number going to be looked down on?

Improve this question

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
11

We can't judge it in a vacuum. If appropriate to the field and to the topic, then fine (normal). But you can also check similar and/or related papers to see if it is normal enough. Some of your many citations will give you a hint, I'd guess.

On the other hand, you use what you have and be prepared for any discussion.

A writing sample is also to judge how well you use the language. How clear you are. Are you concise when appropriate. I'd guess that is more important than citation counts. The review of your paper might be quite cursory, actually.

Improve this answer
10

Agree completely with Buffy's answer: it depends on the conventions of your field and the content of your paper. For example, 57 references might even be too few for a review paper. But regardless of the domain, I doubt having too many references would be too much of a problem.

The part that jumps out at me, though, is that you have 70 footnotes. In some old-fashioned papers, footnotes are used for citations (i.e., you will add a footnote saying "Jones 30" and then the bibliography provides a full citation for Jones's work). In this case, 70 footnotes might be okay. But it sounds like you are not doing this; rather, you have an enormous amount of footnotes which are making parenthetical comments and providing additional content.

Again, it is hard to judge in a vacuum; it might be that adding all these footnotes was a judicious way to present very complicated information. For example, I could imagine a linguistics paper where you use footnotes to provide translations or etymologies without disrupting the narrative. But, I think you should really reflect on whether using so many footnotes was the optimal choice for your paper. In particular, if you are expecting your reader to spend 18 pages bouncing between the main text and the footnotes, it is likely that your paper could benefit from being reorganized.

Improve this answer
3
  • 4
    Do you know that old style still exists in philological research! My footnotes acted as comparative to contemporary insights on the topic in question.
    – user18602524
    Commented Sep 10, 2022 at 22:07
  • 1
    @user18602524 I had a habit of including footnotes with side remarks in my text when I was a student. My master thesis advisor told me: decide whether these comments are relevant additions to the thesis. If they are, include them properly in the main text; if they are not, exclude them entirely. No need for footnotes. This was in math though, so your milage may vary.
    – Marc
    Commented Sep 11, 2022 at 8:49
  • 1
    I had the same experience as @Marc with some of my first papers I had submitted (in theoretical cs, much math involved). Since then I try to avoid footnotes as well. Maybe consider adding separate discussion section in case you do not want to leave the content out.
    – StefanH
    Commented Sep 11, 2022 at 18:09

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .