Yeah, I went through the program back in 1996; I was in the first class after it switched into the applied degree program. There were two distinct groups of people in our class and I can imagine that both groups came from different admission methodologies: there were definitely a number of people who had excellent grades throughout school and were generally on the verge of tears when they started to get Ds and Fs on current event tests in college; then there was another group that were good writers and generally smart, but didn't really care about grades. The interview and writing portions were probably the most important sections of the admission process for this latter group. There was also a writing aptitude test. I finished in the 99th percentile in mine, but I really don't think it was that important.
In your writing samples, don't worry about big words or complex sentence structure: an ability to clearly and concisely present complicated ideas and facts will be looked on favourably. My writing samples included a high school english essay, a piece I had written for a school newspaper, and a short story that was really lame in retrospect. I'd also say that having an idea of where you want to go with your career is important; if you can figure out what your niche is, and make a convincing argument of why you'd be good at this and what you'd be willing to do to get there, it definitely reflects well; and those ambitions don't need to be particularly ambitious. Faculty will look more favourably on someone who wants to be a beat reporter and understands what it takes to get there, than on someone who wants to be a international correspondent and doesn't seem to know what it takes to get to that point.
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