Tag Archive for 'recommendations'

Grrrr!

Here’s a sixth critical thing to know about getting a letter of recommendation: request an alternate, immediate method of getting in contact with your recommenders!  A personal email address or phone number, for example, would be good to have.

Long story short, one of my professors has gone AWOL, and I have no way of contacting him besides his school email and office phone number.  Despite repeated emails and a couple phone messages, it would appear that he is going to forget to send in my recommendation by today.  What can I do at this point but cross my fingers and hope that this school isn’t super strict about their recommendation deadlines?  I mean, they already took my application fees, so…cut me some slack (please)!  Ever been in my position?  How did it turn out?  Leave a comment below!

In any case, I finished my second application over the weekend, so now I’m par-2 for the course.  Sort of.

UPDATE 01/04/11: A happy ending — I got an email confirmation from one of the schools saying that my professor had turned in his recommendation last night.  Phew!  I very much appreciate the effort, Professor, but couldn’t you have responded to at least one of my emails saying that you were on it!?

This guy knows what he's doing

Too bad I didn’t go to clown college…because then maybe it’d be easier to juggle all of these applications!  Haha…ha…

Ahem.

Before I delved into all the statement of purpose writing, resume updating, form filling, score sending, transcript requesting, and question answering, I decided it would be wise (and nice!) to gather all the requisite reference letter information and compile it into one convenient email for my reference writers.  Being currently mired in the mayhem that is applications, I decided that I should probably simplify the process for them as much as I could so that they wouldn’t have to go through the same h-e-double-hockey-sticks.  Here are some important things to compile for them:

"Yes...I know much about this 'computer science' of which you speak."

A couple weeks ago, I finally (finally!) got around to emailing one of my former computer science professors for a letter of recommendation.  Part of the reason I put it off for so long was that I didn’t (and still don’t) know exactly what programs I was applying to.  I felt kind of embarrassed about my apparent lack of direction, but since it was already the end of October, I figured I’d better touch base with him, at the very least to reconnect and remind him of my existence.

As I was writing my email, trying to figure out how to phrase my questions so that it wasn’t obvious I had no idea what I wanted, I realized I was being ridiculous — I should just ask my professor for his advice!  It seemed so obvious that I was kind of mad I didn’t do it sooner.  But better late than never, I suppose.

Continue reading “Grad School Advice: The Counsel of Elders” »