Writing a College Recommendation Letter - What to Know?

spaboolly

I have been asked to write a college recommendation letter for a person who wrote for a website I used to run. He listed his work (unpaid) on his application as an "activity" and me as the activity leader/supervisor/whatever you want to call it. Since I'm not a teacher or really an employer, I've obviously never had to write one of these before, and I'm wondering if there are any universal do's and don't's that I should know. Formatting, style, content, etc? I assume that a formal business style letter would be appropriate? Is there a rule about minimum/maximum length (like a resume being one page)?

Enc

Is it for undergraduate or graduate? It makes a pretty big difference.

Undergraduate recommendations are typically looked at as personal references of character. You want to play up the strengths in moral and intellectual character while indicating the student has much to offer the school as a student and an individual.

Graduate recommendations should be professional references about skill in-field, technical abilities, and academic credentials.

For both 1-2 pages is more than sufficient. When I worked admissions I would rarely see a rec letter worth reading that was more than 1.5 pages, with most solid ones being about .5 to .75 of a page. Admissions committees have to review hundreds of applicants (if not thousands upon thousands for more major universities), writing a novel doesn't necessarily do your applicant any favors unless you have just that much dense information to provide.

A paragraph, on the other hand, is generally the minimum "I wrote this because I feel obligated" amount and looks bad.

spaboolly

Thanks for the input. Definitely undergrad. Those are pretty much the lines I was planning to write along. I also asked him for info about the school and which degree program he was pursuing. Figure it would help if I could relate his experience on the website to what he'll be studying.

Should also mention that the application is all digital, meaning I'll be sending an email rather than a printed and mailed letter. Should I type the letter as the body of the email or send it as an attachment?

Enc

Depends on the school. Most modern ones email you a link to an upload system generated to the student's application. In general, your applicant shouldn't ever see your letter (unless you want him to). That means either sealed envelope delivery or a similar way to get the record to the school in a private manner.

Smaller schools might just have you email their registrar or a designee. I'm not familiar with those sorts of things though as my institution has always been 40k-60k students during my time working here (or processes were very formalized).

spaboolly

He did tell me he'd submitted my information and they would contact me about it, but I never heard from them. Then he later told me to email it directly to a guy in the school's admissions department. It seems like they didn't give him a whole lot of information, so we're trying to piece it together. I wasn't planning on showing him the letter. It's for the school's eyes, not his. I never read any of my college rec letters, and I think that's the way it should be. (Although for the current situation it probably would have been helpful if I had read them...)

mts

You should send it as an attachment saved as a pdf. throw it on some letterhead if you have it to make it look professional rather than him just pretneding a friend is a referrer.

basically you want to talk them up and how you think they have great potential etc hard worker, go getter etc.

Hahnsoo1

It's also better to post personal stories than it is to just list off general attributes. "Hard worker, loves people, blah blah" or the "mission story" (I went on a trip to some third world country and I thought I was changing lives but instead I was the one who was changed!) are the most common things that they see on admissions, and they are terrible. If you can write a way to connect to the person you are writing for in a personal way which tells a great story, it will do far more for them than just telling them the "movie summary of the character".

arthurnottheking

Last month I had to write a recommendation letter for the co-author from my GamesLumus writing group. I often use samples from TemplateLab.

zepherin

Hahnsoo1 wrote: »

It's also better to post personal stories than it is to just list off general attributes. "Hard worker, loves people, blah blah" or the "mission story" (I went on a trip to some third world country and I thought I was changing lives but instead I was the one who was changed!) are the most common things that they see on admissions, and they are terrible. If you can write a way to connect to the person you are writing for in a personal way which tells a great story, it will do far more for them than just telling them the "movie summary of the character".

Also what they did goes along with personal stories. We had a tight deadline and even though he was an unpaid intern he really went into the trenches with us and beat the deadline by a week. Or some such. The US tends attach work ethics with personal character. Which is not great from a social and political mentality, but that’s what we do and showing him having a solid work ethic is the way to go.

Enc

It's also really a good idea to be timely in your writing of the rec letter. If it was asked for in, say, November 2014, replying six years later is probably too late to help.

zepherin

Enc wrote: »

It's also really a good idea to be timely in your writing of the rec letter. If it was asked for in, say, November 2014, replying six years later is probably too late to help.

I think I can still get it in on time.