To all graduate students

Post Reply New Topic

How did you get to know your professors well enough so that they would write you a letter of recommendation?

I never spoke to my professors because I didn't go to office hours or have questions in class but most people I know go to office hours or work with them (research). Personally for me, one letter was written by my undergraduate research advisor and two professors I had taken courses with twice with at least a A-. Our department is small so it was not uncommon to have the same professor for two different courses. A letter from a research adviser is the best type of letter since the professor would have personally worked with you.

you can ask committee members, co-authors on your papers, profs whose classes you took or fellow students, postdocs who left the lab and got prof positions.
make sure to just to ask people that are famous and well-established (at least 1 of them), it means a lot.
good luck.

and don't worry about that they don't know you well enough. this is normal. actually the letters need to be exaggerative not realistic and people in academia know that.

Do well in their classes or at least understand the material, explain your situation and they will probably write a LOR for you.

But I would not recommend for any student in America (especially someone with autism) to go to graduate school because congress made is so students can NOT declare bankruptcy on toxic student loans. Education is a racket in America.

Good luck.

I got my first recommendation letter from a professor who had never taught me in a class, but in whose laboratory I did research for a year. Research experience is the best way to get a good recommendation letter in the sciences (and probably in other areas, too).

My second recommendation letter came from another person with whom I worked in that same laboratory; I got lucky, and before I left, he moved from acadaemia into industry and became the senior head of a major division, which looked great.

My third recommendation letter was oddly last-minute. I was in my final semester of classes and took one just because I thought it would provide awesomeness. It turned out that by piling on the studying and enthusiastic participation in things like message boards and chatroom sessions (nice, non-personal interactions), I managed to become the top scorer in the class. Then, I started to stay after the official chatroom sessions had ended and help students with leftover questions that the professor and TA hadn't had time to handle. It turned out later that the professor got transcripts of each chat and read what I'd been doing, and she asked me to become the class' unofficial tutor. That was great, because even though it involved interpersonal interactions, I had the higher ground (they wanted my help). By helping out the professor and keeping my class score, I was (terribly nervously) able to ask her for a recommendation letter, which she enthusiastically granted. Since then, I have written a number of recommendation letters for her and for her graduate student, who was the course TA (nominations for awards, et cetera), and I think that I could get another good recommendation from her if I needed.

In short: make sure the professor knows you, not just your grade. Volunteer for experiments, class demonstrations, tutoring. Help other students. E-mail the professor. Use office hours. Inquire about research in his or her laboratory - and then, if you can, join in with some research! All of those things make for excellent recommendations.