Guidelines for Students Requesting Letters of Recommendation
The following instructions are designed to help you to help your professors to help you. Please read them carefully since they explain how you can organize and present your materials in a way that allows your professors to work most efficiently so that they can concentrate on the quality of your letter rather than on so many clerical matters.
(1) Put all of your materials together in one package
. Please do not trickle your recommendation forms to your professors one at a time. (2) Include a cover sheet with a quick overview of the requests with their deadlines and any other special instructions
. Note which schools do not have forms, which want the recommendations mailed directly, etc.(3) Fill in the contact information at the bottom of the form.
This is really just a favor to save your professors a huge amount of time in doing multiple forms. (Some forms say, "For the Professor Only," but that is because most students will not know the correct information.) Your professor should give you the following information so that you can fill out the forms with his or her correct formal title, etc. (even though all of this may not be required on every form):
NAME: _____________________________
TITLE: _____________________________
Department of English
Middlebury College
Middlebury, VT 05753
(802) 443-5276
EMAIL: _____________________________
Often, if the college name is already specified, the simplest address will do: "English Dept. / Middlebury, VT 05753." Do not complete any other parts-obviously not the ranking, the date, or the signature, but not even such information as how many classes you took from the professor, etc. Just do the tediously repetitive addressing.
(4) Include addressed and stamped envelopes for all recommendations.
This step is the most mindless and time-consuming-and for that reason you ought to be able to do it for yourself rather than ask your professors to do it over and over again for multiple students. Include an envelope even if there is no form. For the return address on the envelope, use this simple form:
Prof. [LAST NAME OF PROFESSOR.]
English Department
Middlebury College
Middlebury, VT 05753
(5) Sort everything clearly and attach the envelopes to their respective forms
. Use paper clips. This way, your professors will not have to spend a lot of time sorting through the forms and envelopes trying to figure out what goes with what.(6) Submit your materials as early as possible.
When your professors have plenty of lead-time they can plan a convenient time to do everybody's recommendations in their best mood without having to drop everything in order to make the deadlines. It is a good idea not to force your professors into a drop-everything-and-do-it-now time scale! Remember that you are not the only student for whom your professors are preparing letters-each one may have over a dozen requests all at more or less the same time. Two months before the deadline is a good lead time for a request, especially since everyone feels rushed as the end of the semester approaches.(7) Always sign the waiver
. If you retain the right to see your letter some day, it smacks of a lack of confidence, as though you are unsure of how you are regarded by your professors. It is highly recommend that you always sign the waiver. If it looks as though you have forgotten to sign your waiver, some professors may send it back to you with a post-it note for verification. If you reallydo not want to sign it, it is a good idea to put a note on it in order to avoid having it sent back to you with a query.(8) Include a short paragraph outlining what you consider to be your strengths
or the ways in which you have grown at Middlebury or even since you have left Middlebury. There are two reasons for this request: (1) in some ways, no one knows you better than you know yourself, and this may remind your professors of something that they have also observed about you but which might escape them at the moment that they are writing your letter; and (2) it gives them an idea of how you are representing your own strengths in the rest of your application so that they can confirm them-this is an extremely effective strategy.(9) Please remind your professors which courses you have taken with them during which semesters.
Most forms require the professor to specify this information in the letter. It is much more reliable for you to tell your professors this than for them to look it up, especially after years have passed. Your professors may remember you very well as a student, but they might not remember exactly which course you took; and if they report information that is inconsistent with your transcript, someone may notice and consider it a flaw in your application.
We understand that this is a great deal of work and all for the part of the application process that is supposed to be the easiest! (Just give your professors the forms and…voilà!) But we request all of this so that you will have the strongest possible application in the end. If your professors are concentrating on your letter and not sloppily scribbling out addresses for the 48th time and shuffling forms and envelopes and re-reading all of the instructions-and we leave that latter work to you to do more carefully on your own-the result should be very fine indeed. We collectively hope that all Middlebury students go on to do marvelous things; but if individual professors agree to write a letter for you then they are particularly interested in your advancement at the next stage, and they will want your chances to be the very best that they can be. So please try to follow these guidelines to help them ensure that you submit the strongest applications in every way. (Fall 2003)