Getting a great letter of recommendation: Part I Graduate and Medical School

This is a topic that I get lots of questions about all the time.  And late fall/winter is the hot season for getting requests from students for letters.  For a bit of perspective--a faculty person can get something like 20-40 requests for letters from students per year, and each of those students might apply to several schools (do the math).  So your letter is one in a possible SEA of letters that the professor has to write/send.  How can you make your letter stand out?  What compels a professor to write you a great letter?  Excellent questions, my tulips.  There are really only 3 major things that you need to do to help you get a great letter from a professor, and they all happen at different points in the process.  Here they are in order of occurrence:


1. Be memorable (in a good way)
2. Choose the right letter writers
3. Make the job easy


1. Be memorable: Certainly, getting perfect score on all your work tends to make you stand out in a professors mind.  But even the best student, if (s)he never talks to the professor, can be difficult to write a letter for if the prof doesn't know more about them.    How does a prof get to know you?  Ask question in class.  Ask questions in office hours.  Take small group courses where you have more opportunity to interact with a prof 1-on-1.  Do undergraduate research (this is a biggie).  Volunteer at a hospital or clinic.  Do an internship or co-op.  Engage in any of these types of activities that allow a professor to see you "in action" and not just through words on the page.  Shine that light early and often!

2. Choose the right letter writers.  Say you need 3-5 letters from profs.  If you planned ahead, you did many of the things in item 1 so that you have atleast that many people who know you really well. Choose the ones that know you in the specific capacity that will best get you what you need. For example, most grad schools require 3 letters.  And letters from profs that you did research with are the most valued.  If you did not do research in 3 labs (most folks don't), get letters from the labs you did work in and supplement with letters from instructors of courses that were very practical in nature--a lab or senior design course, and from persons who can attest to your leadership abilities (this last one is important for med schools).

Spread your adjectives around the letter writers.  For example, if the school wants your letters of rec to address your "potential for a research career, independence, maturity, leadership abilities, teaching skills, writing ability", split those up so different letter writers address different adjectives according to their best knowledge of that adjective.  The research advisor might be best for the potential for a research career, independence and maturity.  A learning skills center that you tutored for could address teaching skills and leadership. You can overlap adjectives that you would like to = re-iterate to emphasize.  Plotting out your letter this way makes your whole packet look much stronger and more cohesive, which reads well for the admissions committee member that is wading through applicants. How do you get the profs to write about certain adjectives?  see below.

3. Make the job easy.  Send the professor everything they need to write you a great letter.  That includes your resume transcripts, self-addressed stamped envelopes (if needed), etc, and if you have web based recommendations make sure you pre-fill all contact info for the professor and yourself. 

What makes a great letter?  If you read many letters of recommendation you notice what types of letters stand out.  For sure, addressing the specific skills and talents the school you are applying to asks for is a start.  But if the letter only "claims" that you have specific abilities it will read much weaker than a letter that "demonstrates" that you have these abilities by providing detailed evidence.

One of the best ways to be sure your letter contains these sort of golden nuggets is to send the letter writer either a draft letter, or a short summary that gives specific details about things that you have done that illustrate how you embody the traits that you want the professor to talk about.  This is probably the most difficult thing for most students to do.  By and large you are humble folk and are really uncomfortable tooting your own horns.  But believe me, grasshoppers, if you can send me stories that detail specific things that you did in my class, it will jog my memory about other things (we are old, we forget things. it's not that we don't love you), and allow me to write you a much better letter. I ask all students who request letters to send me a draft.  That means that you write a letter as if you were me, addressing the adjectives you want me to cover (ah ha!  that's how to do that last part of #2!) and giving detailed examples that I should know about. In particular, if you worked on a specific project in a class that I taught, I would expect you to summarize for me what the project was, and what specifically YOU did on the the project. This is especially true for team projects where your actual tasks might be buried in the actions of your group.  Remind me what wonderful things YOU did, what problems YOU solved, and how.

Not all professors want/need you to write a draft letter, you can ask them if they do.  If they do not need a draft, you should atleast provide a summary--this will outline for the letter writer what the school asks that letters to address, and then gives short writeup that details how you possess the features of the ideal candidate. 

Most schools ask you to waive your right to review the letters, so you may never know what kind of letter you got (except by if your desired result was achieved, i.e. got into school X) or whether a prof is a good letter writer. So it is best to err on the side of giving as much info as possble, so the letter writer has all the tools they need to really convey how FABulous you are, and how schools should be FIGHTING over you, you are that amazing.

Go out there and be brave!  Good luck!

example of including detail

here is an example of a statement from a draft letter and how it was revised to make it "better".  In the initial draft, the student had this to say about themselves:

"In my class X showed outstanding leadership skills and teamwork when working on research projects in group.  X also showed great skill in performing scientific research"

OK.  so this is complimentary enough, but 400 other people will be having letters that say pretty much the same thing about them (most people do not ask for letters from people who will not say nice things about them).  Without more info the letter will be so short, and an admissions committee has no feeling for how strongly the letter writer feels these things are true.  So what makes your letter stand out from the other 400?  Evidence.  Show HOW you have great skill in performing scientific research.  For example, for research, I expanded 1 sentence to THREE paragraphs.  This is one of them:

"X has also been a tremendous asset as an undergradute researcher in my lab.  He is currently working on two projects: 1) development of magnetic resonance imaging probes that an be activated by electrical activity and 2) design of a device to facilitate delivery of aerosols to rodent models for lung research.  For the first project, X initially worked with a postdoc in the lab, learning chemical syntehsis and characterization methods.  X prepared small molecule gadolinium agents based on DOTA chelators with pendant spiropyran groups.  The spiropyran groups respond to reduction and oxidation to modulate the magnetic properties of the molecule.  With no prior experience in this area, X proved to  be a dedicated worked and quick study, performing many difficult synthetic procedures.  X asks astonishingly insightful questios, some of which have led to redesign of experiments that were proposed by myself and his postdoc mentor.  X's duties and responsibilities have increased as X's proficiency became evident and currently X is performing cell studies to characterize the behavior of these probes in a living system, working mostly independently.  In recognition of X's enormous contribution, X is a co-author on a paper in JACS that describes this work."
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So, doesn't that sound WAY more impressive than "X showed great skill in performing research"?

The expanded version provides description of specific things that X did that demonstrate that X worked hard, learned alot, and earned the right to work independently by impressing the faculty mentor.   Make sure your letter writers have access to this sort of detail about things that you did which will illustrate the adjectives that you want to apply to yourself.

Now is not the time to be humble!  :)  Be honest.  Be detailed.  Be brave.

Now go out there and do it!