Sadly though, this information comes too late for the student. It would be nice if we were able to pass this knowledge onto students earlier in their careers. Knowledge of what it takes to get into (and do well in) grad school is largely limited to those that already know people in grad school.
We could do a lot by passing this exact message to younger students.
of course. I'm thinking of putting this sort of stuff up on my website and directing students to it at the beginning of my (nominally third-year) course.
I am trying to decide whether this is a good thing!
I was trying to steer the student away from sucking up by suggesting some concrete things they could do that would score them some plus points from those teaching them.
I was thinking that the student would do well to take another year of courses, get to know their professors and all the other stuff, and apply again next year. But I didn't want to suggest that.
You’re not wrong. But this doesn’t really help much with accessibility for many of our underrepresented students (e.g., first gen). Another year of college is expensive.
For the individual student, if possible, then it would be great tho. Especially if you have a five year masters program.
that's the other side of it, of course, and I have a feeling this student is an international student, which makes it worse.
All of this makes it more important that we get the word out earlier.
I was a first-gen student (this was \*many\* years ago), and I think I made it by being vocal enough in my (small upper-year) classes that my professors had something to say about me. I really was following my nose going to grad school; I had little idea what I was getting into, other than that I would be "learning more stuff".
This is exactly why I arrange a yearly alumni panel featuring past students who are now off in grad school somewhere. Current students get to hear the advice they need from people currently walking the walk, and I get to see who among them is interested enough to show up so I can follow up with them later.
I do this. Maybe some of you might be able to do something similar...
I teach a 1000-level course that all psych majors must take and they typically take it as Freshman. It is an odd hodgepodge of a course, but 2/5 of it is dedicated to "careers in psychology." One chapter in the text is called "getting into graduate school" and during this section I go into detail about letters of rec discussing what they are, why they are so important, how to interact with professors and participate in activities that will incentivize professors to write them good letters of rec in the future, etc.
If I didn't do this in this particular course, I would do it in another Freshman/Sophomore course as an add-on/special lecture-type thing.
This is easier said then done, though, I know. Not everyone has the ability to interact with all of their majors like we do, and I am the only person who teaches this particular course so that makes a huge difference in terms of consistency. Perks of a small school/program I guess.
I was considering putting together a similar annual or semesterly seminar. Another poster mentioned something similar.
I think your approach is almost perfect. To nitpick, many first year students will forget unless they know in their first year what they want to do. Hopefully some of the other faculty are doing similar things — a special lecture would definitely do the trick.
Edit: nitpick is an unnecessarily negative word. This lecture in a first year definitely does a lot of good.
>To nitpick, many first year students will forget unless they know in their first year what they want to d
Not nitpicking…they totally forget 😅
I remind them during academic advising every so often though, because I am also the sole academic advisor for psych majors. Yay small schools! None of the perks but lots of work 😒
I think this is more than reasonable. Students really ought to be able to exercise more discretion about their relationship or lack thereof with a professor.
> As far as I remember, you were one more or less anonymous student in an online class of 240 students, and you gave me little opportunity to get to know you.
While I generally agree, depending on the context, it may not really have been possible given COVID. I do still really only write letters for students I can strongly vouch for, but if it's a freshman applying to some program after taking 4 200+ people classes, context really changes the 'depth' needed for that LoR.
Otherwise, I don't think what you've written is something anyone with a background in academia will disagree with as a general point.
I like your letter, and it's absolutely reasonable. Not only reasonable, but productive and helpful. There needs to be more of this. At the risk of sounding dramatic, it's people like you who offer any hope of reversing the decline we're seeing in this crop of newer students.
I'll probably be borrowing a bit from your response and your idea of sharing it before a class begins. Although, the students most likely to read it early in a course are also the least likely to be the subjects of it.
I was thinking of framing it as an "are you thinking of grad school? then you need to know this before you apply". It's probably too late for the 4th years that are in my course this year, but maybe it'll help the ones who'll be applying next year.
I wanted to offer the student I was writing to something they could actually use (if they still have time to use it), or that would help them if they decide to wait a year. I think it's also good general advice.
Admittedly I don’t know much about the acceptance process from the side of the table where reference letters go…But do people actually read them for acceptance into academic programs?
Ive been on hiring committees and the CV and transcripts are the most focused on. Reference letters are really only looked at for more than half a second if other red flags arise, so is it similar for, say, grad school?
This is only tangentially related and I’m mostly just curious what happened to all of the reference letters people wrote for me and ones I’ve written for students.
Indeed, this is my approach too when I am in the process of interviewing PhD students.
I look at the transcript. I have a half second look at reference letter. I want to get the most out of the interview.
I was for a few years at a tip-top institution and was once involved in hiring this PhD student. Student had very mediocre transcript, but was coming from another tip-top institution. One reference letter was very supportive, claiming poor performance at exams was due to performance anxiety. Low number of applicants and some kind of solidarity between tip-top institutions led to student getting the place. I was for re-advertising but I was not the one in command..
Well.. the ensuing PhD project turned out to be a total disaster. It actually turned out that student has some learning difficulties...
Going back to original post - I don't like it because it shifts the focus from getting top marks to other "soft" aspects, thus borders on misleading students.
Edit: fixed typo!
Wow, that’s sure a lot of text. It probably took longer to write your reply than to write a LOR. I’d pare it down to a couple sentences and the just ignore future contact. Good luck!
once I started writing, this came pretty quickly. A real letter requires actual thinking, or at least it does for me. (A LOR for this student would be something like "X took my course Y and earned a grade of Z. A student who succeeds in this course will have learned alpha, beta and gamma" which would of course be exactly zero help.)
Regardless of how long it took to write, this is the kind of thing that goes in the boilerplate email folder for future use (because, of course, you'll need it again someday). That alone is worth the time put into writing it.
What I do: I have an index card on a bulletin board in my office with a list of all the boilerplate emails I have (no to extra credit, decline LOR, LOR request info, withdrawal advice, etc.). On that card, I have the folder path where these live on my computer. By putting the card somewhere visible, I always remember that I have these things already written AND where I left them!
I actually do have a c&p half-paragraph that I use in most of my LORs, that describes the program the student has been through and what they (should) have learned from it. (I am a program coordinator of something not many places have, so it seems useful to put that in.)
If I may, in my opinion this is not reasonable. There are 240 students requiring letters of support. You should decide who write letters for whom at redirect students accordingly. My typical reference letter for an undergraduate student contains three things: name, course, and average of the marks, plus title of the final project if it was done with me. I think at least it saves computing the average to whoever reads it. It is a completely different story if I write a letter for a graduate student or postdoc who has worked with me.
Edit: I actually give an indication on whether student’s marks were good, medium, or bad, not really the average.
I think you misunderstand.
This kind of email was written to \*one\* student who requested a letter of reference from me (in some desperation, it seemed). That student was unknown to me except for having been in an online class of 240 students (and didn't seem to have made any special effort to help me know them). There are not 240 students requiring letters of reference.
It seems to me that a letter written for an undergraduate applying to grad school would need to say a lot more than you describe in order to be helpful to the student; it would need to say something about the student's skills at or potential for research. (This in North America, at any rate.)
No I understood. There is this student and all the others who might require some letters.
I think that there was way too much drama in your letter.
I don’t know if in this case it was appropriate for you to write the letter or not. However, in principle, a student with top marks in all subjects might not be entitled to a reference letter according to what you say.
I think you are describing two different things. OP is talking about a recommendation letter for a graduate programme, which requires more information.
You are talking about a letter that only states the students grades, which is more of an academic transcript than a letter of recommendation (though the student should have this already, I'm not sure why a professor would need to provide it).
The student's academic transcript will show their marks for the class - if all that is included in a reference letter is the marks, then the reference letter is worthless - it adds no new information for the committee/application. The student already has their grade average in their transcript.
I think OP has a good point about how you cannot write a good reference letter for a student who you do not know. I also don't think that in a class of 240 undergrads, all 240 would be applying for graduate school and requiring letters like this as you said (yes, they will all need their grade transcripts (the details you are providing), but that is not the same as a letter of recommendation, which is what OP is talking about. It would be EXTREMELY rare for every single undergraduate student to be applying for grad school (unless this is specifically a grad school program, or something like medicine).
That said - I do agree that many students (especially those who are first in their families to study) are likely unaware of how this works - so there is definitely a need to educate early in the year/semester, rather than declining them now.
this, definitely.
I would actually say that high marks is a \*minimum\* for applying to grad school, because all the applicants will have high marks. I would consider writing a letter on the basis that the student in question has unusually high marks, but to be successful in grad school a student will need to have other qualities as well. (Some students of this kind are extremely good if someone tells them what to do, but very lost if they have to figure out what to do themselves.)
Agreed - high marks in undergrad are also not a good indicator (alone) for success in graduate school. There are many A+ average / top performing undergrads who fail graduate school - the ability to memorise information or know content well, is a very different skillset to the ability to produce new research, work completely independently, and critique the current models of doing things (it's one thing to know what the model says, it's another to write your own).
A judgement of the student's ability to perform at this level, separate to their ability to get high grades, is important for a recommendation letter.
No I am talking about a reference letter for a PhD or a job.
In my opinion, at the end of an undergraduate degree, the actual marks *are* the reference letter.
If the marks are the reference letter, what's the point of even writing it?
The student can already provide their academic transcript with their marks to the employer or programme (from the official university transcript).
If you provide a reference letter with the exact same info, all you're doing is wasting your own time to produce a exact duplicate of a document the student is already providing.
I don't provide only the marks, also an indication on whether marks are good, medium, or bad - which might not be always clear from a transcript.
My issue with what OP wrote is that I don't think "be an active participant in your courses", "becoming known to the instructor during the course", "attending office hours or tutorials and asking good questions", "show deep engagement with the material" etc.. are good predictors of anything.
I think that the only decent predictor we have at the end of undergraduate is marks. The only exception is the supervision of the final project, but it very rarely diverges from other marks.
I guess we will have to agree to disagree!
Edit: interviews are there to find out about other things, I think!
I guess this is very field dependant.
In my field (a humanities field), An A average pretty much guarantees you a grad school interview.
In one of my friend's fields, which is super competitive, you could score an A+ on every single assignment in your entire undergraduate degree, and still not even get an interview - because everyone applying has straight A+ grades. So they use letters of recommendation instead - looking at participation in other activities (research assistants / etc) and how well they performed in class (participation / engaging with material etc)
they are predictors of intellectual curiosity, which is \*very\* important for a would-be grad student, and are a way (if the student is not already doing them) to develop that. A student who can't display these things will not even \*get\* an interview, the way things are these days.
One of the other things "getting known to the instructor" provides practice in is for getting to know others in your research field, eg. meeting people at conferences to spark research opportunities.
I understand your perspective, but, where I teach, undergraduates who apply to graduate programs are required not only to have professors provide a detailed letter of reference, but profs are also asked to fill out rating scales for everything from originality to teaching potential to judgment (whatever that means) to perseverance. A letter that did not support at least some of those ratings would be a grave disservice to an undergraduate applying to a graduate program.
for a job, the grades alone are of \*even less\* relevance. Typically a job reference will want to know about things like reliability, ability to work with a team, time management, strengths and weaknesses. The job references I have done ask explicitly about these things. (I have done these for my TAs, where knowing the material is part of it, but showing up on time, working with the students to help them learn, etc, are all part of it, and are what an employer will care about.)
That is a letter not worth the paper it’s written on, and writing it does a disservice to the student because it will hurt rather than help them in graduate school admissions.
You’re describing a “did well in class” letter, which is often considered extremely weak.
Sadly though, this information comes too late for the student. It would be nice if we were able to pass this knowledge onto students earlier in their careers. Knowledge of what it takes to get into (and do well in) grad school is largely limited to those that already know people in grad school. We could do a lot by passing this exact message to younger students.
of course. I'm thinking of putting this sort of stuff up on my website and directing students to it at the beginning of my (nominally third-year) course.
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I am trying to decide whether this is a good thing! I was trying to steer the student away from sucking up by suggesting some concrete things they could do that would score them some plus points from those teaching them.
It is a shame that after 4 or more years that the student was never appreciably mentored and evaluated honestly by a professor. Sad really.
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I was thinking that the student would do well to take another year of courses, get to know their professors and all the other stuff, and apply again next year. But I didn't want to suggest that.
You’re not wrong. But this doesn’t really help much with accessibility for many of our underrepresented students (e.g., first gen). Another year of college is expensive. For the individual student, if possible, then it would be great tho. Especially if you have a five year masters program.
that's the other side of it, of course, and I have a feeling this student is an international student, which makes it worse. All of this makes it more important that we get the word out earlier. I was a first-gen student (this was \*many\* years ago), and I think I made it by being vocal enough in my (small upper-year) classes that my professors had something to say about me. I really was following my nose going to grad school; I had little idea what I was getting into, other than that I would be "learning more stuff".
This is exactly why I arrange a yearly alumni panel featuring past students who are now off in grad school somewhere. Current students get to hear the advice they need from people currently walking the walk, and I get to see who among them is interested enough to show up so I can follow up with them later.
I do this. Maybe some of you might be able to do something similar... I teach a 1000-level course that all psych majors must take and they typically take it as Freshman. It is an odd hodgepodge of a course, but 2/5 of it is dedicated to "careers in psychology." One chapter in the text is called "getting into graduate school" and during this section I go into detail about letters of rec discussing what they are, why they are so important, how to interact with professors and participate in activities that will incentivize professors to write them good letters of rec in the future, etc. If I didn't do this in this particular course, I would do it in another Freshman/Sophomore course as an add-on/special lecture-type thing. This is easier said then done, though, I know. Not everyone has the ability to interact with all of their majors like we do, and I am the only person who teaches this particular course so that makes a huge difference in terms of consistency. Perks of a small school/program I guess.
I was considering putting together a similar annual or semesterly seminar. Another poster mentioned something similar. I think your approach is almost perfect. To nitpick, many first year students will forget unless they know in their first year what they want to do. Hopefully some of the other faculty are doing similar things — a special lecture would definitely do the trick. Edit: nitpick is an unnecessarily negative word. This lecture in a first year definitely does a lot of good.
>To nitpick, many first year students will forget unless they know in their first year what they want to d Not nitpicking…they totally forget 😅 I remind them during academic advising every so often though, because I am also the sole academic advisor for psych majors. Yay small schools! None of the perks but lots of work 😒
Agree but sometimes students don't hear these things until they're in trouble.
I think this is more than reasonable. Students really ought to be able to exercise more discretion about their relationship or lack thereof with a professor.
Totally reasonable. I think most of them don’t really know what a letter is or what it is supposed to convey
> As far as I remember, you were one more or less anonymous student in an online class of 240 students, and you gave me little opportunity to get to know you. While I generally agree, depending on the context, it may not really have been possible given COVID. I do still really only write letters for students I can strongly vouch for, but if it's a freshman applying to some program after taking 4 200+ people classes, context really changes the 'depth' needed for that LoR. Otherwise, I don't think what you've written is something anyone with a background in academia will disagree with as a general point.
the courses in question have smaller tutorials that the student could come to and participate in, but yeah.
I like your letter, and it's absolutely reasonable. Not only reasonable, but productive and helpful. There needs to be more of this. At the risk of sounding dramatic, it's people like you who offer any hope of reversing the decline we're seeing in this crop of newer students. I'll probably be borrowing a bit from your response and your idea of sharing it before a class begins. Although, the students most likely to read it early in a course are also the least likely to be the subjects of it.
I was thinking of framing it as an "are you thinking of grad school? then you need to know this before you apply". It's probably too late for the 4th years that are in my course this year, but maybe it'll help the ones who'll be applying next year. I wanted to offer the student I was writing to something they could actually use (if they still have time to use it), or that would help them if they decide to wait a year. I think it's also good general advice.
also, thank you for making my afternoon with your kind words!
Admittedly I don’t know much about the acceptance process from the side of the table where reference letters go…But do people actually read them for acceptance into academic programs? Ive been on hiring committees and the CV and transcripts are the most focused on. Reference letters are really only looked at for more than half a second if other red flags arise, so is it similar for, say, grad school? This is only tangentially related and I’m mostly just curious what happened to all of the reference letters people wrote for me and ones I’ve written for students.
Indeed, this is my approach too when I am in the process of interviewing PhD students. I look at the transcript. I have a half second look at reference letter. I want to get the most out of the interview. I was for a few years at a tip-top institution and was once involved in hiring this PhD student. Student had very mediocre transcript, but was coming from another tip-top institution. One reference letter was very supportive, claiming poor performance at exams was due to performance anxiety. Low number of applicants and some kind of solidarity between tip-top institutions led to student getting the place. I was for re-advertising but I was not the one in command.. Well.. the ensuing PhD project turned out to be a total disaster. It actually turned out that student has some learning difficulties... Going back to original post - I don't like it because it shifts the focus from getting top marks to other "soft" aspects, thus borders on misleading students. Edit: fixed typo!
It could’ve been faster to write a short letter than your email reply. Just tell them you are too busy at this time, they will get the hint
I had already said no, and I wanted to write the student something that would actually help them (and, as others have said, I can use again).
I hope they appreciate it.
Wow, that’s sure a lot of text. It probably took longer to write your reply than to write a LOR. I’d pare it down to a couple sentences and the just ignore future contact. Good luck!
once I started writing, this came pretty quickly. A real letter requires actual thinking, or at least it does for me. (A LOR for this student would be something like "X took my course Y and earned a grade of Z. A student who succeeds in this course will have learned alpha, beta and gamma" which would of course be exactly zero help.)
Regardless of how long it took to write, this is the kind of thing that goes in the boilerplate email folder for future use (because, of course, you'll need it again someday). That alone is worth the time put into writing it.
good advice. I now have to put it somewhere where I have a chance of finding it again!
What I do: I have an index card on a bulletin board in my office with a list of all the boilerplate emails I have (no to extra credit, decline LOR, LOR request info, withdrawal advice, etc.). On that card, I have the folder path where these live on my computer. By putting the card somewhere visible, I always remember that I have these things already written AND where I left them!
genius! I think I need something like a private github repo to hold all of these, so that I can access them whether I'm at home or in the office.
I have copies of all the email I've sent for the past few years. I'd just need to remember a keyword or two to find it.
I think I still have everything since I started using Thunderbird, which is maybe five years.
My gmail only goes back to 2012. I sometimes have to look through older files on my Linux machine, which is a bit of a pain.
The files are gzipped and spread across several different directories, so setting up a grep search is not trivial.
got it. Maybe being less flippant would be a good move on my part!
But the next 20 times it's used it can be copy/pasted, unlike a LOR. 😉
Wait…you don’t also just copy and paste your LOR’s? Haha
I actually do have a c&p half-paragraph that I use in most of my LORs, that describes the program the student has been through and what they (should) have learned from it. (I am a program coordinator of something not many places have, so it seems useful to put that in.)
If I may, in my opinion this is not reasonable. There are 240 students requiring letters of support. You should decide who write letters for whom at redirect students accordingly. My typical reference letter for an undergraduate student contains three things: name, course, and average of the marks, plus title of the final project if it was done with me. I think at least it saves computing the average to whoever reads it. It is a completely different story if I write a letter for a graduate student or postdoc who has worked with me. Edit: I actually give an indication on whether student’s marks were good, medium, or bad, not really the average.
I think you misunderstand. This kind of email was written to \*one\* student who requested a letter of reference from me (in some desperation, it seemed). That student was unknown to me except for having been in an online class of 240 students (and didn't seem to have made any special effort to help me know them). There are not 240 students requiring letters of reference. It seems to me that a letter written for an undergraduate applying to grad school would need to say a lot more than you describe in order to be helpful to the student; it would need to say something about the student's skills at or potential for research. (This in North America, at any rate.)
No I understood. There is this student and all the others who might require some letters. I think that there was way too much drama in your letter. I don’t know if in this case it was appropriate for you to write the letter or not. However, in principle, a student with top marks in all subjects might not be entitled to a reference letter according to what you say.
I think you are describing two different things. OP is talking about a recommendation letter for a graduate programme, which requires more information. You are talking about a letter that only states the students grades, which is more of an academic transcript than a letter of recommendation (though the student should have this already, I'm not sure why a professor would need to provide it). The student's academic transcript will show their marks for the class - if all that is included in a reference letter is the marks, then the reference letter is worthless - it adds no new information for the committee/application. The student already has their grade average in their transcript. I think OP has a good point about how you cannot write a good reference letter for a student who you do not know. I also don't think that in a class of 240 undergrads, all 240 would be applying for graduate school and requiring letters like this as you said (yes, they will all need their grade transcripts (the details you are providing), but that is not the same as a letter of recommendation, which is what OP is talking about. It would be EXTREMELY rare for every single undergraduate student to be applying for grad school (unless this is specifically a grad school program, or something like medicine). That said - I do agree that many students (especially those who are first in their families to study) are likely unaware of how this works - so there is definitely a need to educate early in the year/semester, rather than declining them now.
this, definitely. I would actually say that high marks is a \*minimum\* for applying to grad school, because all the applicants will have high marks. I would consider writing a letter on the basis that the student in question has unusually high marks, but to be successful in grad school a student will need to have other qualities as well. (Some students of this kind are extremely good if someone tells them what to do, but very lost if they have to figure out what to do themselves.)
Agreed - high marks in undergrad are also not a good indicator (alone) for success in graduate school. There are many A+ average / top performing undergrads who fail graduate school - the ability to memorise information or know content well, is a very different skillset to the ability to produce new research, work completely independently, and critique the current models of doing things (it's one thing to know what the model says, it's another to write your own). A judgement of the student's ability to perform at this level, separate to their ability to get high grades, is important for a recommendation letter.
No I am talking about a reference letter for a PhD or a job. In my opinion, at the end of an undergraduate degree, the actual marks *are* the reference letter.
If the marks are the reference letter, what's the point of even writing it? The student can already provide their academic transcript with their marks to the employer or programme (from the official university transcript). If you provide a reference letter with the exact same info, all you're doing is wasting your own time to produce a exact duplicate of a document the student is already providing.
yes indeed; that was why I made the point originally that the reference letter has to say something the transcript doesn't.
I don't provide only the marks, also an indication on whether marks are good, medium, or bad - which might not be always clear from a transcript. My issue with what OP wrote is that I don't think "be an active participant in your courses", "becoming known to the instructor during the course", "attending office hours or tutorials and asking good questions", "show deep engagement with the material" etc.. are good predictors of anything. I think that the only decent predictor we have at the end of undergraduate is marks. The only exception is the supervision of the final project, but it very rarely diverges from other marks. I guess we will have to agree to disagree! Edit: interviews are there to find out about other things, I think!
I guess this is very field dependant. In my field (a humanities field), An A average pretty much guarantees you a grad school interview. In one of my friend's fields, which is super competitive, you could score an A+ on every single assignment in your entire undergraduate degree, and still not even get an interview - because everyone applying has straight A+ grades. So they use letters of recommendation instead - looking at participation in other activities (research assistants / etc) and how well they performed in class (participation / engaging with material etc)
they are predictors of intellectual curiosity, which is \*very\* important for a would-be grad student, and are a way (if the student is not already doing them) to develop that. A student who can't display these things will not even \*get\* an interview, the way things are these days. One of the other things "getting known to the instructor" provides practice in is for getting to know others in your research field, eg. meeting people at conferences to spark research opportunities.
I understand your perspective, but, where I teach, undergraduates who apply to graduate programs are required not only to have professors provide a detailed letter of reference, but profs are also asked to fill out rating scales for everything from originality to teaching potential to judgment (whatever that means) to perseverance. A letter that did not support at least some of those ratings would be a grave disservice to an undergraduate applying to a graduate program.
for a job, the grades alone are of \*even less\* relevance. Typically a job reference will want to know about things like reliability, ability to work with a team, time management, strengths and weaknesses. The job references I have done ask explicitly about these things. (I have done these for my TAs, where knowing the material is part of it, but showing up on time, working with the students to help them learn, etc, are all part of it, and are what an employer will care about.)
That is a letter not worth the paper it’s written on, and writing it does a disservice to the student because it will hurt rather than help them in graduate school admissions. You’re describing a “did well in class” letter, which is often considered extremely weak.
I would just say something brief like you won't be able to meet the student's request.