Letters of Recommendation
From Unofficial Guide to Engineering
So you’re off to grad school and you need (usually) three letters of recommendation. But... I don’t know three professors!! Well, that’s a bad sign. If you love education enough to go to grad school, you should have participated in class, done research, or at least interacted somehow with professors enough to know a few. But here’s the scoop on letters, who to get them from, and what they should say.
Letters tell a graduate school something that they can’t find anywhere else: what someone else thinks of you. A letter of recommendation is someone else’s impression of you in terms of how they think you’ll do in graduate school. The only way they can write well about that is if 1) they know you from a professional setting, and 2) they know what graduate school is like. That’s why friendly professors are your first resource.
Especially for PhD programs, evidence that you’re capable in a research environment is crucial. That’s why research as an undergraduate is a great experience, and why a letter from your research advisor is key to a strong application. This professor knows you enough to say whether you’re a hard worker, a smart thinker, a methodical researcher, and a good potential graduate student. If you’ve done research and the advisor doesn’t write you a letter, some schools may frown and wonder why not, so don’t put two years of research experience on an application without someone from that experience writing a letter.
Professors from class are also good, but they have to know you for these types of letters. Going up to a prof and saying “I got an A in your class – will you write me a letter?” and him not recognizing you is a bad sign. Professors do notice students who ask good questions, who go to office hours, and who are attentive - these will remember you when you ask for a letter. Taking more than one class with that professor and/or taking project classes with them (as opposed to purely homework/midterm/final classes) is also a plus.
Finally, if you’ve had a summer internship where your boss liked the work you did, it’s more than ok for them to write you a letter. They’ve seen you in a full-time work environment where you’ve interacted with people, completed tasks on a timeline and budget, and gained experience with real-world problem solving. These letters present a different side of you and can strengthen a graduate school application. However, having a boss who’s been to graduate school or interacts with people with graduate degrees is a big help, because otherwise application reviewers won’t know whether that person can honestly give an opinion on your suitability for grad school. But if you know two professors well, one boss well, and one professor marginally, get that third letter from your boss.
By the way: USE LETTER SERVICE. The Career Center at Cal offers the Letter Service, where recommenders send their letters to the Career Center, who in turn send copies to the schools you are applying to. The service is pretty cheap, given the cost of applications, and it’s well worth it. If you’re applying to six schools, getting six letters from the same guy is going to annoy him and decrease your chances of getting those letters sent on time. Many professors are notorious for sending in letters late or not at all, and it’s your responsibility to hound them about it. Using Letter Service early is the best way for you to get those letters to schools quickly and with minimum hassle.
