Receiving a Letter of Recommendation
If you are reading this, you are either thinking about or have asked me to write you a letter of recommendation.
I happy to write letters of recommendations and be a reference for former students if:
- We worked together on a project where we had regular meetings (e.g. supervising undergraduate, Masters or PhD students) OR
- I was the instructor of record of your class (not a teaching assistant) OR
- You are able to point me to direct evidence of your ability that I can reference but have not supervised myself (e.g. people applying for grad school or data science jobs with an external portfolio).
If you don’t meet one of these criteria, I would suggest asking someone else to write your letter for you. It is very important to have people write letters for you who can argue very persuasively for you and without this experience, I would not feel as though I could write a strong enough letter for you without this kind of relationship. If you feel otherwise, please let me know.
If you do meet one of these, the other important criteria is that you give me at least two weeks (14 calendar days) heads up before your letter or recommendation is due.
To make things easy for me, please send me the following:
- A link to the job you are applying for
- An updated copy of any additional materials you are including (e.g. resume, CV, cover letter)
- A few paragraphs detailing why YOU want this job, to be accepted to this school, win this fellowship.
When writing the paragraph for me, it is important you are very specific about why you want THIS job/school/lab to accept you.
Any detail that makes it clear why you and the job would be a good fit (aka the PI researches exactly what you want to do in your PhD, the job matches your data analysis skills with the world of music and audio branding) will allow me to write in a way that will make you stand out from other candidates who are just applying for any old job that looks interesting.
I am also more than happy to provide suggestions on how to write your cover letter or CV if no one has ever explained this to you.