How do I write a recomendation letter for student.

csfmap
Mon, 01 Oct 2012 17:36:19 +0000

One piece of advice would be to keep in mind that this student will likely use his experience with you and your department as part of his application. It will be part of a list of ECs and he will probably have the opportunity to describe what he did in a few sentences. If his experience was a major outside activity, he might even write about it in his essays. So, what he doesn’t need is a lot of description about what he did but rather detail about how impressed you are with him and things that speak to his character (work ethic, getting along with staff, ability to see the big picture, attention to detail, willingness and eagerness to learn… whatever it is about his character that makes you so willing to to go the extra mile to help him out.) Character issues are one of the hardest things for students to get placed in their application because so many are too humble to do that for themselves. To have someone else say how great they are as a person is a great addition to their application.