Is writing to current PhD students to ask to see their proposals a valid thing to do?
After all, each subject, each institution and each prospective supervisor has their own preferred format and style of writing. This makes it quite difficult if the only information I have is vague guidelines and anonymous samples pulled off the internet from other candidates for other universities to study other things.
I also don't really have any personal guidance to fall back on here since I've not been at uni for 5 years and so I can't ask a friendly tutor for any help or feedback. Going directly to the supervisor seems like a bad way to proceed here too. Last time I didn't get any remotely helpful feedback (which was given sparingly and extremely grudgingly) until the third draft (!) once the rest of my application had already been rejected.
Like I say, I've already ballsed this up once before by taking a shot in the dark, writing only using the official, extremely vague instructions.
Therefore, should I write to current PhD students where I want to study and ask for a copy of their proposal?