国外教授给出的推荐信建议

The One-Minute Rule When I‘m on the committee, I try to rea every application; when I chair it, I make sure I o, some multiple times. That‘s many hunres of applications in uner a month. Factor in lots an lots of late letters, classes, etc., an it‘s clear I have to work pretty fast. For the first pass—eciing whether the application eserves more time or not—I can affor to spen no more than about 6-7 minutes per application. (Keep in min I‘ve rea maybe a few thousan applications, so I‘ve ha practice.) If I ecie the application is promising, I may spen over half an hour (in some cases, ays!) on it. But in those first 6-7 minutes, I have to:• eyeball the stuent‘s research recor• form a summary of the transcript• glance at the stanarize test scores• etermine whether the statement is promising• get the gist of 2-3 letters of recommenationIn practice, that means I have about one minute to evote to the first reaing of your letter. Now think about whether your letter works in this context. (For instance, some letter writers put a big, prominent paragraph of boilerplate legalese at the beginning of their letter, which I have to rea before I realize it‘s irrelevant. Coul you have burie that in a postscript? Was that the best use of my minute?)

关于任课老师的写作： Naturally, your most significant contact with the stuent is likely to be in courses. Yet what coul be a rich source of escription is often the poorest: Mor Harchol-Balter reports that at CMU, they call a certain class of these “DWIC” letters (“i well in class”), which are effectively useless.Give us context. What textbook i you use? How much of it i you cover? Di the stuent take it earlier than usual?Don‘t just report the grae; put it in perspective. How many stuents got that grae or better? If your transcript isn‘t nuance (e.g., at Brown we give only letter graes with no +/- ecorations), fill it in. Di they o an exceptional job at something? (Tell us what they i!) Were they biase towars some aspect of your class? (For instance, in my programming languages course, some take much better to the theoretical aspects, while others prefer the systems work. The transcript won‘t reveal this, but it‘s extremely valuable information for a professor trying to ecie whether or not to recruit a stuent.)

关于研究经历的写作： At a highly-competitive university like Brown, we want to know the stuent‘s research potential. The best assessment of this is what they have alreay one. If you are their research avisor, you have a special obligation to them (an to us) in your letter:

• escribe their work in your own wors• tell us what the stuent‘s contribution was• tell us whether it succeee or faile• if it‘s ongoing, tell us why you think it will succeeWe rarely expect the ieas to have originate from the stuent, but we woul like to see signs that they took ownership of the project, improve it in some way, refine the iea, an so on. Finally:• put any publications in contextStuents on‘t always know how to o this. If you publishe a paper on the work, tell us about the quality of the venue. In particular, stuents are poor at telling ifferent kins of publications apart (tech report from conference poster from research paper) an may even try to hie the istinction (I‘ve seen this happen). Help us unerstan what they really accomplishe.If you run a summer research center, you may get bombare with letter requests from each of your stuents. I have seen such people write perfunctory one-paragraph letters. These hurt stuents, an are ultimately unethical. Someone gave you money to run that center; when you aske for it, you took on an obligation. Fulfill it, or else get out of the way. There are plenty of others who will glaly put that money to better use.

还有关于工作经历的推荐信的写作要点： An important special case is the corporate letter: when you, the letter-writer, work in inustry an have no acaemic affiliation. Many corporate letters (like many acaemic letters, but more so) ten to be vapi, clearly written in a ifferent culture an for a ifferent auience. Unless they actually i acaemic research with you, here are some suggestions for improving them.A common mistake is to focus on teamwork. This is important even in acaemia, but often this is the primary focus of the letter, which makes it less valuable. Of course we care about it, but it‘s seconary to their technical skills.

• Tell us if they learne something particularly quickly, mastere a complex technology, or solve a problem others were stuck on. Give us a paragraph of etails.• If you have a concrete reason to evaluate research potential, o so concretely. Otherwise, on‘t bother. -baiu 1point3acres• Give us a brief bio-sketch, incluing eucational qualifications.• Put the applicant in context, an tell us the context. It‘s fine to relate it to your own stuent ays, or to your experience hiring stuents. E.g.:Compare to the stuents I stuie with at Cucumber an Melon University, an the ones I now recruit from there, I woul put him in the top 10%.   

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