Recommendation letter way too short? (electrical engineering grad school)

lotf629
Sat, 13 Dec 2008 01:47:35 +0000

On the one hand, it’s unlucky, but on the other hand, I don’t think you should lose sleep over it. Here is my attempt to make you feel better:

There are tons of posts on this forum from students in the sciences whose professors seem to have spent a minimum of time on their letters. My impression (from having read these and other boards compulsively for the last three months) is that some professors in lab sciences just don’t write very good letters, period, even for their better students. Descriptive writing is just not as key an academic skill in the sciences as it is in the humanities. Ph.D. programs in the sciences must see bland letters all the time. I’m going to guess that in the sciences, a bland letter in the context of an otherwise strong application is not going to do any harm.

If your other letters are good and the rest of your application is good, I’m going to guess that this one will be water under the bridge.

The only thing I can think of is that the letter you saw is the kind of reference that you might get in a corporate context: it’s possible that your supervisor just doesn’t know what’s expected of him in an academic context. If you are very close or you feel like taking a risk, and if you feel like he would have time to write a longer letter if he so chose, you might bring up the letter of recommendation. Just trying to brainstorm…You could, maybe, bring up some specific thing that you were hoping one of your recommenders would mention and ask him to revise his letter to say something about it as a favor. You could say something like, “One of my professors just mentioned to me that it’s helpful if my letters of recommendation mention X research project. I hope you feel comfortable saying no if you don’t have time, but I wonder if you would be willing to add some mention of that project to your letter if you haven’t included it already: it would be a big help to me because it would tie my application together.” Or something.

If you feel like he really does want to support you in your career, it’s worth sitting down and pondering whether you might have the time and opportunity to bring it up tactfully. That’s what I think. A strong letter can only help.

Otherwise, however, I think you should relax about it.