| 2007-11-28 | Excuse me. Can you write a recommendation letter for me? Every year, I receive a lot of invitations from students to be their referees. I refuse most of them. I am willing to be the referees and write letter of recommendation for only a handful of stduents who I really know. I feel sorry for most of the students who are refused. I know, they need to put down the name of some professors to apply for World Wide Exchange programme and other programmes.
However, it is not that I do not want to help my stduents. I would be happy to help only if I know them. How can I recommend a students that I do not know well?
Even if I know the students, I rountinely ask the students to send me a copy of their CV, a personal photo (to help me remember how they are), a brief biography (so that I know more about them), their academic transcript and a letter of recommendation of themselves written on behalf of Dr. Wong. The last one is a test. During the preparation of such letter, they may find out that I do not really know them well and I have nothing to write about them. Of course, the letter also shows how they write and how they organize their thoughts.
"How would I write such recommendation letter?" When I write letter of recommendations, I typically include the following items in different paragraphs:
Paragraph #1: How long and how I get to know the person.
Paragraph #2: Comment about the language skills, with evidence or elaboration.
Paragraph #3: Some other quality (say, whether the applicant is a motivated learner, whether the applicant takes initiatives to learn), with evidence or elaboration.
Paragraph #4: Some other quality (say, whether the applicant is sociable, whether the applicant has leadership skills), with with evidence or elaboration.
Paragraph #5: The applicant's weakness, and room for improvement, with evidence or elaboration. (say, the applicant has is weak in certain aspects but he/she can acquire or improve his/her skills through the programme that he/she is applying for.)
.......
Final paragraph: Based on the above qualities, I believe Mr so-and-so (or Ms so-and-so) will be able to contribute to and benefit from the programme the most. To recommend Mr so-and-so, I have no reservation.
I am not willing to write such letter for anyone unless I can say something like "To recommend Mr so-and-so, I have no reservation" at the end of the letter.
Some students asked me my students' successful rate if they have me to write the letter. An excellent question! I think a good recommendation letter will help marginally most of the time. For my administration duty, I have read thousands of recommendation letters. To me, I will give bonus points to a carefully written letter. In short, a very carefully written letter cannot help an unqualified applicant very much. A very lousy letter can destroy a good applicant occasionally, but not all the time. A very carefully written letter can help a marginal applicant the most -- some of the times but not all the times.
| 2007-11-12 | No pain, no gain! | | 2007-09-14 | Teaching is to be enjoyed, and so is studying. Grades should only be secondary. | |