Many students are looking for faculty members to provide them with a letter of recommendation, either for a job – a scholarship – or a graduate school application. Writing a letter of recommendation is a very important task which if done well requires quite some time and planning. Letters of recommendation are supposed to be as supportive as possible but they also are supposed to be an honest assessment – we write these letters for our students – but also for our colleagues who will have to make often hard decisions and who use these letters as point of reference in their decision-making process. Therefore, for me it’s important to be honest in my letters of recommendation and therefore, I do not provide references for people I feel I cannot assess. However, I have received an increasing number of requests from students to write letters of recommendation for them – and in many cases I did not feel well positioned to provide the letter requested. I understand that it can be often difficult to find an appropriate person to provide a reference, however I can only write a good and truly supportive letter for those persons who I know sufficiently. As I have received increasingly aggressive emails from students demanding letters often on short notice, I decided to establish a list of requirements which must be fulfilled to qualify for a letter of recommendation from me – please review this list before contacting me:
Undergraduate students asking for a letter of recommendation must:
– have taken two courses with me – one can be a directed study course OR
– have taken one course with me and worked with me for at least one term on a work-study project OR
– have worked with me for their honors project
Graduate students asking for a letter of recommendation must:
– have been my supervisee for at least two terms and taken a course with me OR
– have taken a course with me and worked with me for at least two terms OR
– have been my supervisee for at least two terms and worked as my Teaching Assistant OR
– have been a collaborator for three terms or more OR
– have worked with me as teaching assistant for two terms or more (please note: here I will be mainly able to assess your performance as teaching assistant and professional skills) OR
– have been my supervisee for four terms or more
If you fulfill the requirements you may contact me latest four weeks before the deadline for the letter and provide me with:
- University transcripts
- Academic or Professional CV (depending on the purpose of the letter)
- For scholarships and graduate school applications: one piece of academic writing