Letters of recommendations

Writing letters of recommendation is an important duty of my profession. When requesting a letter of recommendation from me, please follow the procedure below: 

Procedural aspects:

• Contact me via email to request a letter of recommendation at least 5 weeks in advance of your first deadline. 

• If I agree to write a letter please send all supporting documents and a list of programs/jobs where you will apply with deadlines. Please also give me a heads up about non-standard letter procedures, such as having to send things via physical mail or special websites.  In general, I highly recommend sending me all your requests in one go 

• If you are an undergraduate student, in general I will only agree to write you a letter if you have taken at least one class with me (multiple ones would be better) and/or a reading course, and your grades in my classes were A- or above.  Exceptions can be made upon discussion with me.

• Please send me the following documents and answers to the questions.

Questions:

• What is your name and preferred personal pronoun?

• In what capacity and for how long have we known each other? 

• Are there highlights on your CV that I should pay special attention to? Are there non-standard circumstances I should be aware of in reading your file?

• What are your long term goals? If you are applying to graduate school, do you have an area of mathematics that you are especially interested in? 

• If you are applying for an industry job, what aspects of your being should I address?

Documents:

• CV

• Undergraduate Students:  the form at this link with your signature

• Undergraduate Students: transcript (an unofficial one is perfectly fine)

• Undergraduate Students: a list of your mathematics classes and a short description of the classes themselves

• Research statement.

If your letter has not been submitted within 24 hours of a deadline, please send me a reminder. Also, sometimes graduate school applications do not request letters from recommenders until the applicant has submitted the application. Do not put me in a situation where being away from email for 24 hours will make me miss a deadline.