‘Tis the Season for Letters of Recommendation

Lisa Clark Diller

Actually, most of my letters were written last fall, but in late December as I labored over several of them while also trying to enjoy my holidays, I wondered how other people approach the crafting of rec letters.  Since I only teach undergraduates, I don’t have a sense of what graduate schools are really looking for.  I spend a good bit of time at conferences trying to pick the brains of people I meet who sit on admissions committees.  What needs to be included in letters of reference?  What attributes in general are people in grad programs looking for in their graduate students?

I also write many letters of reference for law and medical schools, as our history majors are more likely to go into those fields than they are into social science or humanities programs.  But the letters for the latter types of degrees require more crafting, in my opinion.  It seems like there is some sort of mystery involved in this process—we weren’t taught how to do it in our doctoral studies and yet I have to write dozens per year, whether for internships, jobs or further education.  I sometimes wonder if I’m the only one suffering from a sense of “referee-inferiority.”  I know that these letters can sometimes make a huge difference in whether a student makes it into a program and I want to do justice by them.

Here are some of the specific tactics I’ve taken, often shaped by conversations with those who are in charge of reading such letters of recommendation.