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A letter of recommendation for graduate school should provide a personal account of the student’s characteristics and strengths. Students should carefully choose professors who know them well and provide them with as much personal detail as possible. The letter should not include too many statements about a student’s need for improvement.
A letter of recommendation for graduation is part of what applicants present to an admissions office to apply for acceptance into a program. Test scores or grades are relatively impersonal and, while attesting to the student’s aptitude, they do not discuss the graduate student’s personal characteristics. While the letters may briefly detail a student’s academic aptitude, they are really intended to be more personal accounts of the student and provide a comprehensive and more colorful picture of how that student will fit into any graduate program.
Before discussing the content of a letter, it is important for students to think carefully about the professors they ask to write a letter of recommendation for the graduate school. One consideration is whether the requested teachers have any association with the schools the student is applying to. At competitive schools, a letter from someone with connections to that school can speak volumes. Equally, or perhaps even more importantly, is thinking about how well the teacher knows the student. A warm personal letter about achievement or preparation for graduate school comes best from professors who know and like the student.
When making a recommendation request, students can help professors add important details to a graduate school recommendation letter by sending reminders of completed work. Requests for letters, which must be placed at least one month before they are needed, must include transcripts, term papers, lists of all classes taken with the professor, and summary of other activities that the professor and student engaged in together. . The aim is to provide the letter writer with as much personal detail as possible, which can help jog the memory or provide content for the recommendation. Even a scribbled remark in a final paper can turn into a complementary statement about the student.
The professor’s job is to write a highly personal letter of recommendation for the graduate school that is fed with examples of student gifts. With information such as work notes and personal knowledge of the student, it is quite easy to create a one or two page letter that speaks to the student’s strengths. Some specific qualities sought after by graduate schools include maturity, autonomy, cooperation, originality, and research capacity. Concrete examples of how the student excels in these areas are exceptionally valuable.
What should not be included in a letter of recommendation for the graduate school are too many statements about a student’s need for improvement. If a professor is uncomfortable with a student’s readiness for graduate school, he can simply state to the student that he cannot make a recommendation. Professors put their own reputations on the line when they recommend students; writing a dishonest review is not recommended.
For students, this illustrates the need to cultivate strong relationships with teachers and work to improve performance. Graduate students should view professors as resources, get to know them during office hours, and work to make themselves pleasantly memorable. The teachers most likely to give the strongest recommendations are those who know the student well.
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