Requesting Letters of Recommendation
Office of Career Services
|
|
REQUESTING
LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION
One of the greatest areas of confusion and
miscommunication among students
applying to graduate school involves letters of recommendation. Students are often hesitant to approach faculty to ask for letters. Writing letters of recommendation is part of a faculty
member’s job and they expect to write letters for the good students in their
classes. Do not ever hesitate to ask for a letter or recommendation because you feel you will be imposing. In
the process of deciding whom to ask and how to ask, students often
procrastinate--making it more difficult to find willing faculty
members to write letters on short notice. What follows are suggestions, which
may prove helpful to students in the process of seeking letters of recommendation:
Whom
should you ask for a letter of recommendation?
Normally graduate schools are interested in receiving
letters describing a student's
academic ability. Thus, you should ask faculty
members who can comment on your
performance in an academic setting. Generally you would
want to ask faculty in classes where you have made
the best grades. Even if other faculty know you well,
an instructor of a course where you earned a C might not be able to write a
very strong letter. possible, you should strive for
letters that stress different areas of strength, e.g., one letter
that emphasizes computer skills, another your research skills. That way letters
won't be duplicates of each other. Asking the faculty
advisor or someone who has
known you only in an informal setting, such as a fieldwork
class or student organization, may bring a refusal because most faculty know that you need letters from professors in your
key courses. If you wish to have an employer (from a psychologically relevant
job) or a fieldwork supervisor write a letter for
you, consider using him or her as an extra reference unless the school requests
a letter from someone who knows you as a
volunteer/fieldwork
student or employee. The minimum number of letters
requested by a school should
come, if at all possible, from your academic instructors.
Never have a relative, family friend, or minister write a letter for you unless specifically instructed to do so by
a school to which you are applying.
How
do I get to know faculty?
It is up to the student to make a special effort. Taking
more than one class from the same professor is a good idea. Participating in
class discussion is helpful, but make sure the professor knows your name. To
accomplish this you might talk to the professor before or after class or stop
by the office hours. However, be sensitive to cues from the professor; don't
interrupt the professor just as he or she is about to begin lecture or engage
in a lengthy conversation after class if other students are also waiting. The
ideal way to get to know faculty is to volunteer to
work on research or special projects. Do not wait until your senior year to
think about graduate school. If possible begin your planning in your sophomore
or junior year.
How
do you approach a faculty member to ask for a letter of recommendation?
Hopefully you will have had a chance to know at least one
or two faculty members well enough (work on the faculty research project, involvement in several small
classes, etc.) that asking for a letter is a
comfortable process. However, that is not the case for all students. Some may
find that faculty members who they know best are
part-time faculty who are not around when they need
letters or the full-time faculty they know are on
sabbatical or have retired. Thus, they will be in the awkward position of
having to ask a faculty member whom they do not know
well to write a letter. Approach the faculty member by explaining your situation and inquiring
whether he or she knows you well enough to write a helpful letter.
Listen carefully to the response. If the faculty
member seems reluctant, you might want to consider asking someone else.
Always ask the faculty member in
person. Do not leave a pack of letters in the faculty member's mailbox and expect him or her to willingly
write the letters. If you cannot appear personally, at least phone to find out
if the faculty member is willing.
Should
I waive my right to see the letters?
The Buckley Amendment grants students rights to have
access to their
educational records including letters of recommendation. However, recommendation
forms ask students if they wish to waive their right to see the letters of recommendation. Most authorities advise students to waive
their rights because the recipients will then know that the information in the
letters is more candid. Information, contained in letters where the student
does not waive the right of access, may be discounted by the schools who
receive it. Also, many students do not realize that they only have the right to
see their records if they are accepted by a school and enroll.
Give
faculty members enough time to write the letters.
Many students delay in completing their application forms
and postpone the process until a vacation period. As many letters are due near
the beginning of the year, students often complete their applications over the
winter break. As they begin to
organize their applications they approach faculty near the end of the fall semester.
Do not assume that faculty
members will enjoy spending their winter vacation writing your letters. Instead
approach faculty at least six weeks before your first
letter is due, so that they may write the letters at
their convenience. Some faculty members would
appreciate it if you would leave a reminder message on voice mail several days
before the deadline. Ask the faculty member if he or
she would like you to do that. Also, you will want to approach faculty early enough that, if they are not able to write a
good letter for you, you can still ask other faculty members.
Make the process of writing the letters as easy as you
can.
Faculty members may see up to 300
students a semester. Hence they may not remember the details of your
experiences in their classes as well as you do. Provide a resume describing
which classes you took from the faculty member in
question, your grades, the topics of any papers you wrote, and any other
noteworthy events related to the class in which you participated. Even if you
received an outstanding grade in the class, the faculty
member may know little else about you other than the small sample of behavior
observed during the class.
To provide the most informative, well-rounded letter, many faculty would like
additional information about you. You may want to provide a resume, which
includes:
a) your overall GPA and Psychology GPA
b) your GRE scores (if available)
c) a list of relevant classes you have taken including
your grades in each
d) a statement of your goals. If you have different
programmatic goals for different schools to which you are applying, be sure to
inform the
faculty member of that fact.
e) your work and volunteer experience (if any)
f) your accomplishments in research (if any)
g) your participation in psychology-related
extracurricular activities or
other noteworthy activities, i.e. student government (if
any)
h) a list of any honors you have received or expect to
receive
i) an explanation about any area in which you consider
yourself weak, or any other information you consider helpful
You may want to approach the faculty
member shortly before the deadline to see if the professor needs any additional
information. (This will also serve to jog the memory in case the professor has
set the letters aside.)
Is
there anything else I should do to make letter
writing easy for the professor?
Writing letters of recommendation
is a time consuming process. Just
filling in the information on the recommendation
forms (name, title, school, address, phone, date, etc. --all but faculty signature) may take up to several hours if a
student is applying to a large number of schools. A student who fills in the
blanks for the faculty member may find his or her
thoughtfulness results in a better letter from a faculty member who appreciates the student's organizational
ability. When requesting the letters, you might ask each faculty
member how he prefers to be listed on the recommendation
forms.
Arrange the letters in a systematic way. Provide a cover
sheet with the name of the school, the program desired, and the date the letter is due.
Do not expect the faculty member
to spend his/her own money or the department's money to provide envelopes and
stamps.
In the packet you give to the faculty
members writing your letters, include envelopes that are addressed and include
the return address of the faculty member. Make sure that
you put enough postage on the envelopes. Type whenever possible.
Additional
tips:
1) Most faculty members prefer
to send the letters directly to the school. Do not
ask the letter writer to return
the letters to you unless the institution specifically requests that procedure.
2) Since the letter writers
invest a lot of time and energy in writing the letters and
hope that you will be successful, they would like to know
the outcome. As a
courtesy, please inform those who wrote letters for you whether you were
admitted to graduate programs and which ones. The undergraduate and graduate
advising offices would also like to know about successful applicants.
References:
Requesting
letters of recommendation. (n.d.) Retrieved August 16, 2005 from http://www.csulb/edu/~psych/gradprgm/prostud/recletters.pdf.