<p>i've been a writer for a long time. i hone my craft independently, reading up on it and practicing it. i almost never submit my work to contests, competitions. but i do spend a decent amount of time on it.</p>
<p>the issue is, if i send in supplements of my writing and the adcoms thinks they are underwhelming/not that special, will that be worse than me not sending them anything at all, so they don't really know the quality of my work? not that i'm hiding something...i did get published once in a literary journal, but i don't think that piece was 'awesome' (personally)...</p>
<p>I have the same question. I also dabble in writing but I’ve only lightly toyed with the idea of sending something in. It seems a bit presumptuous of me if I did, ahah.</p>
<p>I remember reading about this in a book on admissions, I think it was the one about Stanford by Dean Fetter. As I recall, if students send in supplements they’ll have them evaluated by someone in the department. Probably the English department in your case. The adcoms don’t hold themselves out as experts in literary writing, modern art, etc. But there are lots of people conveniently nearby who are.</p>
<p>So if the evaluator likes your writings, its great; but if they don’t like them, they’re going to basically tell the adcom “this is the best writing this person has because its what they sent us, and it isn’t up to the standards we expect of our students” with the not very thinly veiled message of “we don’t want her/him – lets try someone else”. </p>
<p>It’s your call… I think the advice of an earlier poster to have an outside trusted person read thru them first is an excellent idea.</p>
<p>i’m just not sure that the benefit of it otuweights the possbile risks…it won’t make my admission, but it could break it seeing as writing is very important to me and a large part of my ECs…</p>