eSignature Professional Letter of Recommendation Made Easy

E signature professional letter of recommendation

hi I'm Colette Pat I direct the diversity programs in the mathematical and physical sciences at Berkeley and I'm here today to talk to you a little bit about letters of recommendation for graduate school and fellowships a very special welcome to this webinar to the LSM students I hope this is helpful to you as well talking about letters of recommendation those of you who are applying to graduate school and for fellowships to support your way through graduate school it's very important that you have good letters of recommendation what are letters of recommendation what do you need them for how many of them do you need how do you get them how do you ask for them who do you ask for them what's the timeline for getting them those are some of the questions that you might be asking and I'm here to answer some of those questions what are letters of recommendation let's address that first letters of recommendation are letters supporting your graduate application or your application for fellowship from primarily faculty in the field that you would like to go into for your graduate studies they can either come from faculty or from people that you've conducted research with and I'll talk a little bit later about who to ask and how to decide between different people that you might want to ask for letters of recommendation from the letters should be supportive of you they should be from faculty who can advise their colleagues at other places to in fact admit you accept you to graduate the Graduate there graduate programs or Awards you fellowships so you want to be sure to get good and positive letters of recommendation what do you need them for you need letters of recommendation as part of your complete graduate admission package so when you apply the the faculty who are reviewing your application will look at the many different parts of your application and we'll pay particular attention to your letters of recommendation why is that they're looking not only at what you've done your transcript what you say you want to do your statement of purpose any scores that demonstrate that you are a high achiever like perhaps Jerry scores they're also looking for verification from their colleagues at your home institution or at National Labs or other places you might have done research that you are a very good scholar that you are very promising in science math or engineering and that you will do well at the graduate level they're looking to their colleagues who are your faculty for that kind of word of verifications so that word of verification comes in the letters of recommendation you need them both for your graduate admissions applications and for all your fellowship applications how many of them do you need you need three generally for graduate admissions and four for some fellowships so as you think about getting your letters of recommendation you should be thinking about four or five faculty that you could approach to ask for letters of recommendation and then figuring out among those four or five faculty which three you really want to prioritize for the graduate schools that you are most interested in getting into the ones that perhaps are going to be most challenging for you to get into and then an additional one or two who can write letters for you for to support your applications for fellowships how do you go about getting the letters of recommendation how do you ask for them what's the timeline for doing that so here's the funny thing about letters of recommendation although you don't write it although the faculty write them it is still your responsibility to make sure that they are done and that they are in by the right deadlines to all the places that they need to go that's bit of a challenge so to help you meet that challenge here are some advice before you go ask the faculty set your timeline you should be asking the faculty for these letters well in advance of when you actually need them you should ask them to please try to submit the letters in advance of the actual deadline so that you insert a little bit of time to go back and bug the faculty a little if they haven't gotten their letters in on time so when do you ask for them you should be thinking about who to ask really the summer before you apply to graduate school so your graduate applications are going to be do usually in somewhere between October and January at most places your fellowship applications are going to be due on the same timeline in order to give the faculty enough time to really write the letters thoughtfully and carefully for you you need to approach them usually in the summer or at least be thinking about who you will approach in the summer so that come August or September when school goes back into session you can show up in those faculty members offices and start asking them for the letters all right how do you go about asking for them when you ask for letters of recommendation if you feel a little shy about it you can start with an email ultimately though I very strongly recommend to you that you make if you that you make a face-to-face contact with and a face to face in person appointment with the faculty members that you're asking for letters from if they're at your home institution or in the immediate geographic vicinity that you live of course if you did an internship or a research placement far away from your college you can't go meet with them in person and then your whole interaction will be over the phone or by email which is fine but if the person is close by to where you live you do want to go and meet with them face to face it's fine though in any event for your first interaction to be by email and the email can be a very simple email that just says that you're applying to graduate school that you would like to request a letter of recommendation for them for your graduate applications and your fellowship applications and that you'd like to meet with them or talk further with them about which places you're applying to the deadlines for these letters and whether they would be willing to write a letter that would help you to get into those places or to win those fellowships it's a very simple email that explains your intentions and your desire to talk further with them about this don't worry if they don't respond especially those of you who are at big universities major research universities sometimes over the summer the faculty are very intently doing their own research and they pay a little less attention to their email sometimes faculty are just very very busy and they don't get a chance to respond to every email that comes by and they may really want to write you a letter and they don't respond don't get turned off keep going back to them a couple times try being persistent remember getting the letters is your responsibility because they're an important part of your graduate application in your application for fellowships if they're not in there and they're not there to support you it's going to be your career that will suffer so you really need to make sure that they're there to make your applications complete so if the faculty don't respond right away go back and be persistent just politely remind them that you've emailed them previously and you're hoping to hear back from them if they're at your home institution let them know that you'll drop out in their office hours so just be politely persistent so remember politely persistent but persistent when you go to talk to the faculty so if they respond to you and they say sure they'd be happy to write a letter for you or okay they you know please come by and see me or any kind of when when you finally get some kind of positive response make an appointment and go by to see them when you go see them take the following information with you first take a letter of take a take a list of all the places that you're thinking of applying to graduate school so all the schools that you want to apply for when you go and talk to the faculty member you're going to use that list to ask them if they could write you a letter of recommendation for those places in particular could they write you a letter that will help your application to succeed at those particular places or are there other places that they would recommend that you apply to that you have not yet thought about to put on your list the way that they respond will give you an indication of whether they think that you're aiming at the right level for graduate school or not or they might be able to tell you about some programs that are very good in the area that you want to go into or where you can really do research in the area that interests you that you're not aware of or haven't yet thought about and so that can be a very helpful interaction also take with a copy of your transcript and remind them about the way that they know you so you might be asking somebody for letter because you took a course with them and did very well in their course you might be asking somebody for a letter because that you did research with them in their lab you might be asking somebody for a letter because you did research in their lab but they didn't have a lot of interaction with you you worked primarily with their graduate students and postdocs so you may have to go and talk to them about what you did in their lab make sure that they know that they've seen your transcript that they know your grades that they know what you've done and when you go meet with them use that as an opportunity to explain anything in your transcript that you're not particularly happy or proud of to explain to them what happened in those various courses or that semester or that quarter when perhaps things didn't go as you hoped they would make sure that you explained that to them so that they understand especially if there are grades or experience or or periods of your transcript that are inconsistent with their knowledge of you as an outstanding student sometimes a faculty member will choose to write in their letter that there are inconsistencies and that it's the part of you that they saw the excellent part of you where you did very well that is your true promise a scientist and that can be very compelling to an admissions committee so be sure to explain to them what happened if you didn't do well in a course along the way or a semester or a quarter or a year of your studies there's usually a pretty good explanation and you can go ahead and give it to them take with a draft of your statement of purpose it doesn't have to be a complete polished version in fact it shouldn't be because you're going to invite them to give you feedback leave it with them they may give you feedback they may not if they do it will be helpful to you be sure to also include a copy of the list of fellowships that you are applying to because the fact that you are applying for fellowships like the National Science Foundation the Department of Energy the Ford Foundation fellowship the gem consortium fellowship these will all be indications to them that you're very serious about going to graduate school and that you want to go to a good place that you your apply you're being ambitious in applying for support to do that okay and then finally take a table to the faculty or better yet take a hard copy and also email them a table with your name your phone number and a phone number that you can be reached at your cell phone number preferably your email address an email address that you check regularly and the names of the places that you are applying to both the graduate programs and the fellowships that you're applying for include the list of places and fellowships that you're applying to the URLs where they will be submitting their letter of recommendation and the due dates and also any kind of special information that they may need or any special points that you want them to highlight in their letters and that would not be you can't really instruct the faculty in what to write but you could request that they highlight certain things perhaps that came out of your conversation with them about what they might write in their letter of recommendation I'm going to address very quickly some questions that people usually ask me about letters like should you ask if should you ask people who know you less well but are better known or people who know you better in general the strongest letters come from the people who know you best in contexts where you have performed very well academic academically or in research so the best letters the strongest letters tend to come from faculty or researchers who have had the opportunity to closely observe your work and who know you very well and write about that it's more important to get letters from people who really know you as a scholar or a researcher than from people who just have like a big name or are well-known it's actually the content of the letter that will be persuasive to that faculty members colleagues people sometimes ask me if they should get letters from graduate students or postdocs particularly if they've worked in a lab and they really haven't been in contact with the principal investigator who's the faculty member or the staff scientist they've only worked with graduate students and postdocs sometimes students are taught by postdocs or graduate students and they've done very well in those courses and they haven't really had much interaction with the faculty member who might be lecturing in the course what do you do in that situation so one thing I recommend is well first I would say that anyone who has a PhD who has a doctorate or who is a professional researcher or a professional instructor whether they have a PhD or not if that is their occupation and they're professionally teaching as a member of the faculty at your institution or professionally working as a staff scientist in a lab can write you a very good letter and will be taken seriously so that's fine to do if it's a graduate student I caution you to rather ask the graduate student to go visit the faculty member with you and sometimes faculty will write a letter including input from the graduate student who has worked most closely with you the lab or from the graduate student who has been your instructor in a in a discussion section of the class so that's usually the best way to make sure that you have the faculty member actually write the letter but also have the graduate students input if that's possible for you other questions that I'm sometimes asked are what you should do if you are choosing to go into a field other than the one that you have your bachelor's degree in so let's say you have been trained as a physicist and at the undergraduate level that's what your BA is in but your your your or your BS but you'd like to get your PhD in engineering who should you ask for letters from so in most circumstances it's advisable to have at least one letter from a faculty member or a scientist or researcher in the field that you'd like to go into it's okay to have the other letters come from people you took courses with in physics say whatever you the field is that you came out of that's fine and you should benefit from the relationships you've established in the field that you came out of but it's very important if you can to have a letter from somebody in the discipline that you'd actually like to do your PhD work in if you can sometimes people ask me if they should get letters that they've been asked to write themselves and in those situations it can be held sometimes faculty will do that and in that situation it's good to actually draft a letter and give it to the faculty member but make sure that it's in draft form so that the faculty member actually adds their own information to the letter and that it really reflects the faculty members communication with their colleagues so faculty do do speak to other faculty in particular ways that are very important for you to have indicated in your letters of recommendation in general people who are going to take a year off from graduate school or who are not planning to go immediately to graduate school will ask me if they should wait and then get the letters when they actually apply or if they should try to get the letters when they finish up their undergraduate work so I'd like to make just a brief comment about memory as I said earlier in this webinar it's very important for the faculty to be able to speak to the distinctive and unique things that you have done as a student in their class or a researcher in their lab and in order to do that effectively it's helpful if their memory of you is quite recent so I do strongly recommend that if you are planning to wait a year before going to graduate school or longer than that if there's something else you want to do that's perfectly fine go ahead and do that but go ask for the letters of recommendation as if you were going directly to graduate school that's when the faculty or the researchers that you've done research with in their lab will remember you best so ask for the letters as early as you possibly can and then if you decide to wait a year before you go or if you defer and you get admitted and you defer and decide to wait and you need to reapply to a graduate program you can go back to those faculty and update them and ask them to update their letter update them about what you've been doing and update their letter all right good luck getting your letters of recommendation remember make sure to get three make sure to ask for letters that will help you to get where you want to go to the graduate program you want to get into to win the fellowships that you'd like to win make sure to ask the faculty in person to ask them often and to give them enough information to write good strong positive letters for you good luck