WHAT IS A POTENTIAL LETTER WRITER?
Most graduate applications require 3 professional letters of recommendation. These letters of recommendation can seriously help or hurt your application. On our "Applying" page, we have information about how to request letters. In preparing to apply, it will be helpful to cultivate relationships with professionals including supervisors and/or mentors who later may be able to write a letter of recommendation on your behalf.
WHO COULD BE A POTENTIAL LETTER WRITER?
The best letters will come from individuals who know you well in a professional context. Make a point of getting to know your professors, supervisors, and mentors and letting them get to know you. Here are some strategies for doing this:
- Be a good student! Attend class, put forth your best effort, and ask for help when you need it. Students have many opportunities to make favorable or unfavorable impressions on their professors. Succeeding in a class is one way to stand out to professors.
- Go beyond what is required for class. In addition to succeeding in the classroom, seek out extra opportunities to enrich your education. This may mean going to office hours to discuss topics in class that you found particularly interesting. This may mean attending non-mandatory talks or lectures of interest in your department.
- Get to know professors in more than one context.
- Take more than one class with the same professor.
- Ask your professors if there are opportunities to participate in research in their labs.
- Take more than one class with the same professor.
- Volunteer or Work in a research lab.
- Take on leadership positions in organizations that involve interacting with faculty.
