Recommendation Letter Questionnaire

For current and former students

I am more than happy to write a recommendation letter for you — it’s part of my job, after all. It will save me time, and lead to a better letter, if you can fill out the following information and send it to me both in the text of an email and as an attachment.

Logistics

• Student name
• Submission deadline
• Nature of the recommendation — briefly describe the grant or fellowship
• Website link for the opportunity
• To whom should the letter be addressed?
• How does the letter need to be submitted? — e.g. by email, online, by post

Substance

• How do we know each other, and for how long? Please list the classes you’ve taken, and so on.
• If you’ve taken a class with me, please remind me what grades you received, and whether there were any assignments — especially papers — you were particularly proud of. It would also help to include that paper as an attachment.
• What are your educational or career goals? How does this opportunity fit into that trajectory?
• Are there specific ideas and themes you would like me to emphasize? Any weaknesses in your record you would like me to explain or help minimize?
• What are three adjectives you could imagine describing you in a recommendation letter, and what are some examples of how I might have observed those traits? Optional but helpful.

I will send you a confirmation email when I have submitted the recommendation. If you have not heard back from me one week before the deadline, please send me a reminder.

If at all possible, please enable me to submit all of the recommendations at the same time — that is, trigger the automated emails even for more distant deadlines right away.

Hat tip to Christina Ludema for the format.