Siu Recommendation Letter: Fill & Download for Free

I applied for grad school programs in planetary science, robotics, aerospace engineering, and CS, and was very fortunate to have a couple of professors and lecturers who I had a very good relationship with after taking their classes and/or working for them in some capacity.I don’t think I ever asked for letters of recommendation via email. I talked to them in person each time, and my first priority in talking to them was actually not asking for a letter of recommendation, but rather asking for general advice about graduate schools. They all gave slightly different responses, based on their own experiences and the context in which they knew me, so that was very helpful in figuring out where I wanted to apply, finding out about programs I wasn’t aware of before, etc. It was also a good chance for them to get a sense of what I wanted to do, what my motivations were, and in a few cases, get a sense of some of the other things I did in undergrad that they didn’t know about before.Then I asked them about a letter of recommendation. (I think one or two offered before I asked.)This way, not only did they know that I wanted a letter of recommendation from them, but they also had a much more detailed context for my request, and what I wanted moving forward. At the same time, I learned a lot from them about not only grad school, but about career opportunities, and general life advice as well. Wish I could say that was exactly how I planned things, but actually writing this response and thinking back was what made me realize that that’s how things turned out in each case for me.As I recall, I thanked each writer in person and gave them each a small box of chocolates after I got my results back (also asked for advice about what to do with the results at the same time).Now, is asking via email bad? No, I don’t think so. But asking in person is likely better, unless it’s really hard to track down a certain professor (that can happen). Using that conversation as a way to learn more from your professors is just a bonus (alternatively, getting a recommendation is a bonus, depending on how you view it). I’ve never met a professor who didn’t like to give advice and tell stories. After all, their job is to, you know, profess things. Might as well let them. ; )

How do I get my psychology major daughter to focus her energy on her studies instead of joining a research lab? She says it will help her get accepted to grad school but I don't think it will.Unless her studies are suffering significantly due to time spent doing research, your daughter is, in fact, probably right. Lots of people with very good grades apply to graduate school. In STEM, research experience is a very important indicator of being able to do well in grad school, since research is, after all, the primary activity of STEM grad school.Now I haven’t sat on any grad admissions committees, but I have worked a lot with undergraduate researchers (and was one for most of my undergrad). I’ve also had a lot of conversations with various professors on this topic. I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty that most STEM graduate schools would happily accept a person with very good (but not perfect) grades, and research experience, over someone with perfect grades. The more research experience, the more they can cover for a dip in grades (to an extent). Of course, classes and grades do come first, for the most part, but if her grades are already pretty good, research is far, far more valuable than straight A’s for someone wanting to go to grad school. Take it from someone who had good, but not perfect grades, a lot of research experience in undergrad, and a fair number of grad school acceptance letters.Doing research in undergrad also has the added benefit of helping many students figure out whether they want to go to graduate school at all. I know some students who did research in undergrad, found they didn’t enjoy it, and realized that doing research at that point was extremely valuable for having taught them that lesson about themselves. That semester or two toiling away at lab and wishing they were doing something else probably saved them a lot of misery later on.Research also happens to be one of the ways that students get to work with and know professors well, especially in schools with large classes and little student-faculty interaction during class time. Having a good relationship with a professor goes a long, long way towards getting a really good letter of recommendation for grad school.“Jane is an excellent researcher, and has done XYZ in my lab, leading to results that will soon go into a paper to be submitted to The Journal of Particularly Groundbreaking Studies,” sounds much better than “Jane always showed up to class, and got an A+ on her final.”So if your daughter’s doing decently in her classes, and the research wouldn’t impact her academic work too much, I’d say let her spend some time in a lab.

What can I do throughout highschool to build my resume for a Harvard application?I’ll assume that you are a high school student looking to go to undergraduate (though a lot of this applies in other cases as well). Let me first tackle (what I assume to be) the spirit of the question.The first thing you can do is stop trying to build a resume for a Harvard application.You’re thinking too small. I really hope that your life’s goal is not “get into Harvard.” What happens when you get in? Are your hopes and dreams complete? Does it not matter anymore what you do in college, because you got the name? What happens if you don’t get in? Why do you want to go to Harvard? Does that goal necessarily involve Harvard at all? (And by the way, answering these two questions actually will help you with your Harvard application. Or help you decide that it’s not your only goal.) Your odds of doing well dramatically increase if your broaden your scope of what you care about (e.g. “I want to be a successful business owner”) and then look at what schools (multiple schools!) might get you there. There are very few paths that are completely closed to you if you don’t go to one particular school, even if it is this one.You probably won’t get in. I don’t happen to know you, but I do happen to be able to look up admissions statistics. The numbers associated with schools like Harvard are a little depressing for most college applicants. So again, are you really going to make this thing your goal? Remember when I said to look at multiple schools? Very low odds become a little better when you apply to multiple schools.Harvard is a pretty diverse place. Very generally speaking, the primary unifying quality of those students is high intelligence (and/or legacy and/or very rich parents). But Harvard doesn’t really specialize. Now if you were applying to a place like Caltech, or a place like RISD, it’s a lot easier to say “these schools care about these skills, and probably much less about these other ones” and make sure you prepare accordingly. What of Harvard? Should I tell you to “just be smart”? Make sure your parents went to Harvard? (Good luck with that.) Turns out these schools accept lots of different kinds of people. You decide what you want to present to Harvard… and what that is going to be depends a lot more on you than on the school (unlike at more specialized places).Build a resume that will help you get to a goal beyond just college.“But I’ve already thought of all those things! And Harvard really is the best option and on the top of my list!” Alright then, to the letter of the question.Show you can handle it. Remember that folks at Harvard are pretty smart. Not only do you have to be able to handle that kind of environment and the associated work, you have to show that you can do it. Take the hard classes in high school. Take leadership positions when appropriate. Work hard.Take advantage of what is around you. It turns out that these places with “holistic admissions” will (fortunately) look at applications in context. Farm boys in Kansas are judged differently from prep school girls in Singapore. You will not be penalized for not taking AP/IB classes if they don’t exist at your school. On the other hand, if they do exist, and you didn’t take them… well, you should have. A person who says they want to be a scientist and hasn’t worked at least a little with local researchers will be judged differently if their mother is a university professor, than if the “local” university is 500 miles away.Make sure you can get good recommendations. These matter. Do your high school teachers know who you are? Do you have good relationships with them? Do you have one or two who can act as your mentors and are willing to put in some extra effort to really show a college what an amazing student you are? (Amazing student is just about a prerequisite, by the way.) Have you talked to them about what you want to do in/after college? If you do have these relationships, good. If not, try to fix that. And I don’t mean suck up. I mean put in some extra effort on your end to be an outstanding student.Best of luck. And please remember to apply to multiple schools (and not just all the top-tier ones).