This website is maintained by students/seniors who have gone through the application process and have colleced useful information which is made availble in this blog. However, when it comes to Letters of Recommendations- we probably have no idea as we have never read it or written one! In this case the below given information is taken from an article "Applying to Ph.D. Programs in Computer Science" by Mor Harchol-Balter, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University. The following information is merely reproduced from that and was found extremely useful and true. SO A BIG THANK YOU TO HIM!
Perhaps the most important part of your application is the letters of recommendation. You will need 3 letters of recommendation for the Ph.D. program, and typically 4 letters of recommendation for a fellowship. Ideally you would like to make all your letters of recommendation count. Consider the following two letters:
i. Letter 1: “I highly recommend student X for your graduate program. Student X received an A+ in my undergraduate algorithms class. He was ranked Number 2 out of 100 students. He got the highest score on the final. He worked very hard all semester, never missed a class, and was always able to answer the questions that I asked in class. This conscientious attitude makes him an excellent candidate for any graduate program. ”
ii. Letter 2: “I highly recommend student Y for your graduate program. Student Y received a B in my undergraduate algorithms class. He was ranked Number 29 out of 100 students. Halfway through the semester we started working on network flows. Student Y seemed extremely excited by this topic. He disappeared for 4 weeks and even missed an exam. However when he came back, he showed me some work he had been doing on a new network flow algorithm for high-degree graphs. He had done some simulations and had some proofs. I’ve been working with student Y for the past couple months since then and he is full of ideas for new algorithms. I think student Y’s initiative makes him an excellent candidate for any graduate program.”
Which letter do you think is stronger? It turns out that Letter 2 is very strong. Letter 1 actually counts as 0. At CMU we mark all letters like letter 1 with the acronym D.W.I.C.. This stands for “Did Well In Class” which counts for 0, since we already know from the student’s transcript that he did well in class. By contrast, student Y’s letter gives us a lot of information. It explains that the reason student Y didn’t do better in class was that he was busy doing research. It also tells us that student Y started doing research on his own initiative, and that he is quite good at doing research. The professor was impressed enough with student Y’s ideas that he took him on as a student researcher despite student Y not having high grades.
You want your letters to all be of type 2 (this doesn’t mean that you should skip class!). Remember that letters of type 1 will not count. You want words like self-motivated, strong research potential , own initiative, independent, and driven to appear in your letters. These are the words that we circle when reading recommendation letters. You therefore want to ask letters from people who have seen you do research. These may be professors or employers.
One caveat: It makes some difference whom you ask for a letter. As a general rule (there are always exceptions due to people’s fame), letters from professors count the most. Next highest are letters from research scientists. After that come letters from lecturers, systems scientists, employers, or postdocs. Please do not get a letter from a graduate student. If you found yourself doing research where you were supervised by a graduate student or postdoc, you should ask the professor for whom they work if she can co-write the letter. The reason is simple: professors are the ones reading the letter, and they are most likely to know other professors.
There is an issue for students who have been working for a while. You will certainly want a letter from your employer, but you will also want two letters from professors. This was an issue for me when I applied to graduate school. What I did was to keep touch with a few professors during my time at work. When I was ready to apply to graduate school, I contacted the professors who knew me well and scheduled a meeting with them to discuss the research that I had done while I worked. I gave them each an oral presentation. I also gave them each writeups of each of my projects.
Perhaps the most important part of your application is the letters of recommendation. You will need 3 letters of recommendation for the Ph.D. program, and typically 4 letters of recommendation for a fellowship. Ideally you would like to make all your letters of recommendation count. Consider the following two letters:
i. Letter 1: “I highly recommend student X for your graduate program. Student X received an A+ in my undergraduate algorithms class. He was ranked Number 2 out of 100 students. He got the highest score on the final. He worked very hard all semester, never missed a class, and was always able to answer the questions that I asked in class. This conscientious attitude makes him an excellent candidate for any graduate program. ”
ii. Letter 2: “I highly recommend student Y for your graduate program. Student Y received a B in my undergraduate algorithms class. He was ranked Number 29 out of 100 students. Halfway through the semester we started working on network flows. Student Y seemed extremely excited by this topic. He disappeared for 4 weeks and even missed an exam. However when he came back, he showed me some work he had been doing on a new network flow algorithm for high-degree graphs. He had done some simulations and had some proofs. I’ve been working with student Y for the past couple months since then and he is full of ideas for new algorithms. I think student Y’s initiative makes him an excellent candidate for any graduate program.”
Which letter do you think is stronger? It turns out that Letter 2 is very strong. Letter 1 actually counts as 0. At CMU we mark all letters like letter 1 with the acronym D.W.I.C.. This stands for “Did Well In Class” which counts for 0, since we already know from the student’s transcript that he did well in class. By contrast, student Y’s letter gives us a lot of information. It explains that the reason student Y didn’t do better in class was that he was busy doing research. It also tells us that student Y started doing research on his own initiative, and that he is quite good at doing research. The professor was impressed enough with student Y’s ideas that he took him on as a student researcher despite student Y not having high grades.
You want your letters to all be of type 2 (this doesn’t mean that you should skip class!). Remember that letters of type 1 will not count. You want words like self-motivated, strong research potential , own initiative, independent, and driven to appear in your letters. These are the words that we circle when reading recommendation letters. You therefore want to ask letters from people who have seen you do research. These may be professors or employers.
One caveat: It makes some difference whom you ask for a letter. As a general rule (there are always exceptions due to people’s fame), letters from professors count the most. Next highest are letters from research scientists. After that come letters from lecturers, systems scientists, employers, or postdocs. Please do not get a letter from a graduate student. If you found yourself doing research where you were supervised by a graduate student or postdoc, you should ask the professor for whom they work if she can co-write the letter. The reason is simple: professors are the ones reading the letter, and they are most likely to know other professors.
There is an issue for students who have been working for a while. You will certainly want a letter from your employer, but you will also want two letters from professors. This was an issue for me when I applied to graduate school. What I did was to keep touch with a few professors during my time at work. When I was ready to apply to graduate school, I contacted the professors who knew me well and scheduled a meeting with them to discuss the research that I had done while I worked. I gave them each an oral presentation. I also gave them each writeups of each of my projects.
I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to read this article!
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