Letters of recommendation

If you are thinking about asking me for a recommendation, read the following in its entirety.

I look forward to writing letters for my students! I want to encourage and support you in pursuing further academic study, applying for scholarships, and finding jobs. The purpose of this page is for students preparing to ask for a recommendation, since it is often not taught, and to also outline conditions under which I will not write you a letter.

Firstly, consider if I am the best choice to write this letter for you. Have our interactions been extensive enough that I can say more than “this person got [GRADE] in my class”? For a letter to be strong, the letter-writer needs to be able to speak personally about the student in ways that are relevant to the specific program. This means the letter-writer should have first-hand, specific examples where the student has demonstrated a high interest, creativity, or excellence in the content or skills of focus (in this case, that would be things like statistics, working with data, data science, interrogating systemic inequality, research in a related field, etc.). When you are CONSIDERING whom to ask for a letter, you should reflect on what the program entails and who has observed relevant interest or excellence. When ASKING for a recommendation, it is both reasonable and advisable to specifically ask: “Will you write me a strong letter of recommendation?” Weak letters can be catastrophic to applications!

If we decide that my writing you a letter is not for the best, this is not a personal judgement on my part or a reflection of your capabilities—it probably means I didn’t get to know you well enough, or that the programs you’re applying to would be better served by other perspectives! If you cannot think of enough candidates, you might consider waiting and applying next year (to periodic programs) and, in the meantime, intentionally developing relationships with potential letter-writers. This can include things like prioritizing assignments in particular courses to produce outstanding work, expressing interest consistently and visibly in class, going to office hours to express your interest and deepen your understanding in material you find interesting, or taking initiative in group projects. If you would like to talk more about how to cultivate these relationships and choose strong letter-writers, I’m happy to talk about it.

Next, the key to effective recommendations is making them as detailed and specific as possible. I will write as many honest, positive, and professional things as I can based on what I know of you and your work. You will provide me with any other information that you think will help me write an even more detailed letter: transcript, resume, relevant application essays, personal statements, etc.

Finally, my colleagues and I all write many letters—I write over a hundred per year! This is a very important part of our job and we want to do it as well as possible. So, when requesting letters from any of us, give as much advance notice as possible—ideally more than one month! And please do be thoughtful and send your writers thank-you notes for this work; it goes a long way to show that this labor is appreciated.

Now that you’ve read through this material, let’s chat about it! Then you can submit all the relevant information.

This page and the associated form borrow heavily from Chad Topaz and the JMC.