[Shamelessly stolen adapted from Will Styler's Letter of Recommendation Guide.]

I can only confidently agree to write a letter of recommendation for you if I feel like I can give a strong, specific, and meaningful positive recommendation which is likely to help your application. As a result, I’m not able to write for everybody who asks, and whether or not I’m willing to write for you depends on the answer to four big questions:

1. Have we interacted in enough depth for me to be able to give details?

   • I generally write for students I’ve had extensive interaction with, students who’ve worked with me one-on-one (e.g. for an Honors Thesis, 199, IAship, RAship, or other departmental involvement), or folks I’ve come to know well over the course of many classes and office hour visits. If I’ve only had you for a single larger class, or had you for a few classes but without strong interaction (e.g. in office hours), it’s very difficult to write a strong letter which graduate programs will value and which will actually help your case, so I’m pretty unlikely to be a good choice to write for you, and I’m likely to decline.

2. Can I recommend you strongly based on your academic performance?

   • It’s much easier to recommend students earning A’s and High B’s in my classes and submitting awesome work. Although it doesn’t matter as much for non-academic letters, and extenuating circumstances can definitely help explain things, it’s much harder to write a strong letter when your grades in my classes don’t appear to match your effort or my praise.

3. Am I the right letter writer for the program that you’re applying for?

   • You’ll want to carefully consider whether a recommendation from a Linguistics professor carries weight. If you’re applying for Linguistics or Cognitive Science, Audiology, or Speech Pathology grad school, absolutely, I’m a fine choice. But outside of related fields, it’s a good idea to speak with somebody in your field to get a sense whether letters from outside-of-your-field faculty are appreciated, valued, and desired, or whether it’d be wiser to ask another professor whose work is more closely related to your field.

4. Are you giving me enough time to do a good job?

   • Deadlines have a way of creeping up, I know, but barring exceptional circumstances, I’ll want your materials in hand around a month before the first letter is due (although if I’ve written for you before, this can often be accelerated).

Of course, you’re always welcome to ask, particularly if you think you meet these criteria or if you think there’s some other extenuating circumstance that makes me still make sense.

How to ask for a letter of recommendation

If you think I’d be a great choice to write for you, given the above criteria, please send me an email containing…

• A quick description of what you’ll be applying for and where (e.g. what kind of job/program, how many schools, what level?)

• A paragraph or so describing why you think I’m a particularly good choice to write for you

• A list of classes you’ve taken with me and your grades

• Your resume/CV

• An unofficial transcript of your time at UCSD (as a PDF)

• The earliest due date among your applications, so I have a sense of the timeline.

You’re also welcome to drop by my student hours to talk with me then about your application.

Once I get that information, I’ll take a look and let you know what I think. If I’m willing to write the letter, I’ll need a bit more information!

Information I’ll need to write for you

In order to do my job well and give you the most effective recommendation(s), there’s some information I’m going to need from you. Knowing the below is useful for me, and being able to clearly answer these questions will help you in planning your applications as well.

You’ll need to send the answers to the below questions, for each of the programs you’re applying to, at least a month before the first letters are due! I’ll always do my best to advocate for you, but the simple fact is that my best will be better with more time to prepare!

UCSD Letter of Recommendation Release Form

First, you must complete and email me this UCSD Letter of Recommendation Release Form. Make sure to email this form to me along with your other documents.

General information about you

To start, I’ll need the following kinds of details about you.

1. What your long-term goal is, and how this fits in

   • Something like “I’m hoping to get my PhD and then become a university professor” or “I’m applying to law school to do contract law work”

   • If this is addressed in your personal statement, as it should be, you can skip this

2. What classes you’ve taken with me, your final grade in the course, and what year (e.g. “LIGN 111, Winter 2018, I got an A!”)

   • This just makes sure I don’t forget that I also had you for that one class three years ago

   • If it’s been a while, also include information about your final projects or other outstanding work you’ve done for me

3. Any accomplishments or other exceptional things that you’re trying to emphasize in your application overall

   • This could be something like the breadth of your background in Linguistics and/or in the specific field for which you are applying.

Also make sure to include:

• An up-to-date CV (for academic jobs) or resumé (for industry positions)

• Your personal statement, if it’s not position-specific

Please include all application materials as PDF or Plaintext or Google Docs, rather than Word Documents.

Program-Specific Information

For each school or program individually, ordered by due-date, I’ll want to know the answers to the following questions:

1. Where you’re applying

   • This should be in the form of “The Department of Linguistics at UC San Diego in San Diego, California, USA”

2. What you’re applying for

   • Something like “I’m applying to the PhD Program in Linguistics” or “I’m applying to their school of public health”

3. Why you’re applying to that specific program

   • If you’re doing things right, there’s a reason you’re applying to each specific program. Tell me what it is.

   • Something like “At UC San Diego, I’m hoping to work in their Fieldwork, working on the interface between grammatical tone and morphophonology with Sharon Rose and Gabriela Caballero”

   • If you’re applying for a transfer, tell me what your major would be and why that school’s a good choice

4. Any particular emphases for that specific letter

   • Something like “I’m really hoping to work with Dr. So-and-So, because their work has bears such-and-such relation to my interests. Also I think I’d fit in really well there because [relevant facts about yourself]”

   • This is also where you’d tell me that, for instance, “for this particular program I’m really pitching myself as a cognitive scientist”, or “this job is for a computational linguist, so please emphasize my computational experience”

5. Where the recommendation is submitted

   • Either a web address, mailing address, or if there’s an application system (like Interfolio), tell me that.

6. If applicable, give me the URL or text of the job ad

   • … and please make sure to promptly designate me as a letter writer in their system, so the system will let me submit whenever I’m ready.

7. Tell me when the recommendation is due

   • All I need is something like “February 31st, 2020”

   • If you need multiple letters, give me an ordered list.

Also be sure to include:

• Any position-specific cover letters or personal statements

• Any other application materials (e.g. teaching statement, research statement, diversity statement, etc.) which you feel would be relevant and useful to my letter writing.