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Re: Letters of Recommendation - Tips on How to Write Them



At 11:47 AM 9/15/99 -0500, Steven T. Ratliff wrote:

Would anyone else like to share ideas on how to write a good letter?

Ooooh, good question.

Let me contribute a quick non-exhaustive list, from the point of view of
someone who *reads* hundreds of letters per year. I hire PhDs and I'm on
committees that award fellowships to grad students.

1) If the addressee doesn't know you personally, be sure to write the
letter carefully enough that *you* look like a respectable person.
Remember, the addressee needs to get a calibration on you before deciding
whether your recommendation means anything.

To say it the other way: I've seen recommendations that were literally
form letters; to exaggerate only slightly imagine:
Dear _______

I am pleased to recommend ____________ very highly. Last
year he/she was in my __________ course and received the
grade of ________. I'm sure you will like him/her.

with the blanks filled in using a non-matching font. Such a letter doesn't
significantly hurt an otherwise-strong candidate (it just gets ignored) but
it causes us to laugh at the person who prepared it.

2) Obviously, be clear about how well you know the candidate.

3) A wise person who is my friend and mentor makes it a point to always put
something negative in the letter. This makes the letter appear more
honest, and indeed it *is* more honest. If the candidate is really strong,
you can infer that from the slightness of the cited weakness.

4) It is really great if you can compare the candidate with someone the
addressee knows, such as:
Compared to Mr. Smith who was accepted into your program two years
ago, Ms. Jones is a stronger theorist but a less proficient
experimentalist.

On the other side of the coin:
-- Grade in one course means nothing.
-- GPA means less than class rank, because grade inflation is rampant.
-- Class rank doesn't mean much unless your institution's admission
standards are known to the addressee. That is, the bottom-ranked person at
one institution might outclass the top-ranked person at another.

5) Please put your phone number on the recommendation. If I'm serious
about hiring the person I'm going to call you.

6) Please stick to the facts; please don't make conclusions unless you're
really sure what the addressee is looking for. Don't assume that one
weakness is disqualifying. I make hiring decisions based on people's
strengths, not weaknesses.
Example #1: The first mathematician I ever hired was out-and-out
psychotic. When the Voices got too bad, he would check himself into the
hospital. We'd leave him there for a week or so and then go pick him up.
I was happy to deal with all that, and happy to pay him, because he was the
best mathematician around, and he got done what I needed done.
Example #2: The best programmer I ever hired couldn't get into a decent
grad school because his GRE scores were too low. He's just got a phobia
about tests. Sheesh. He's way smarter than the faculty members who turned
him down. (If they're nice to him, maybe he'll forget about that little
incident and endow a couple of buildings for them....)

To be continued....