Reference Letters
I am honored to be asked for reference letters. The more experience I have had with someone who wants letters, the better. For undergraduates, this usually means having completed two classes at the 200/300 level or one class at the 400 level. For graduates this means having completed a class, coauthored a paper, or developed a substantive, collegial, working relationship.
You want letters from professors in whose courses you did very well. If you did significantly better in other professors' courses, you should consider soliciting letters from them first. For admission to graduate programs, you will ordinarily need letters from professors in whose courses you received a B+ / 3.5 or better. In letters for undergraduates, I report some basic information about the topic of the class, the size of the class, your grade, and some details about your essays or projects in the class. The better the grade you earned in my course(s), the stronger the letter I can write.
For me to prepare a reference letter I need the following items a week before the deadline:
- Job Description. Please send me a description of what you are applying for, such as the text of the job ad. Identify the application deadline. If you are applying for a series of academic jobs, build a spreadsheet or word document with names, addresses, deadlines, and job info and send this to me.
- Address Information. Get the full name of a person I should send the letter. Confirm the mail or e-mail address by checking the organizational website or calling your potential employer: if there is missing information or a typo in the address the letter may never arrive. If you know the name and title of the person to send the letter to, addressing your letter to that person will show that you've done your research, and your letter will be more warmly received than if it is just addressed "To Whom It May Concern" or "Dear Committee Members".
- Resume. Please send me a resume; if you are applying for faculty positions or research funding, please send me an academic curriculum vita.
- Draft Letter. A 500-word draft letter that you write as if you were writing the reference letter for yourself. There is a rough relationship between the strategic thinking you put into this draft letter and the usefulness of the letter I produce. Make the first paragraph about how we met, how long we've known each other, and what class or research project we did together. Make the second paragraph a more detailed discussion of the class or research project we did together: the topics we covered, research questions we addressed, particularly challenging assignments, theories discussed, methods we used, or important findings and conclusions. Use the third paragraph to highlight your particular contribution to the class, your role in the project, or the important findings and conclusions you in particular made in your essays. Use the fourth and final paragraph to highlight a few things that might be particularly relevant to the person receiving the letter, but only cover aspects of your life and experience that I would reasonably know about. I won’t use all of your words, but this will help me see what you want emphasized in your letter.
- Additional Forms. Some jobs applications have additional forms, please fill these out before you send them to me.
If you are a graduate student, I'd strongly recommend reading the Chronicle of Higher Education article on "The Basics of Cover Letter Writing", or my own essay "A Dozen Sentences That Should Appear In Your (Academic) Job Application Letter".