Advice for students asking for a letter of recommendation

This web page collects some thoughts and advice for students who are thinking of asking me for a letter of recommendation. I consider it a privilege to write recommendation letters, and I'm happy to write about positive experiences I've had with students.

I will not send the letter directly to you. I'm happy to send a recommendation directly to the school, institution, company, etc. Usually, I will get an email directly from whatever organization you're applying to with instructions on how to submit the letter to them directly. Occasionally, there will be a position where the organization asks you to send my letter to them, rather than expecting me to send it. This is not an arrangement I'm comfortable with. (Personally, I would be skeptical of any organization that asked for recommendations to be submitted in this way. That's not how it's supposed to work.)

It's helpful for you to remind me of deadlines. I don't mind it if you email me a reminder when a deadline for a recommendation letter is approaching. In fact, I appreciate it. Emailing me a week or so before a deadline is a good idea. I'm generally fairly good at keeping track of deadlines (I keep track of recommendation letters in a spreadsheet), but this is a situation where some redundancy is an excellent idea.

Things I could write about in the letter. If you've taken a class with me, I'm happy to write about your performance in the class, academic abilities, etc. It helps if I've seen you asking or answering questions on Piazza or Courselore, met with you in office hours, and otherwise seen you being engaged as a student. If you did a project in one of my courses that was particularly outstanding, that's a great thing for me to mention in the letter. If you've been a CA in a class I've taught, that's great, especially if you've been active on Piazza or Campuswire answering questions from students.

Will my letter help your chances? You should be aware that as a teaching faculty member, my main responsibility is teaching and not research, so my recommendation might not carry a ton of weight in assessing your potential as a researcher.

Send me your resumé. It's helpful for me to know more about what you've been up to outside of whatever class or classes I know you from.