Graduate Student Success Coaching

Letters of Recommendation for Grad School and More: An Overview

Learn about the purpose and process of getting good letters of recommendation for grad school, medical school, law school, fellowships, scholarships, undergraduate college, job applications, and more!

Getting Excellent Letters of Recommendation for Grad School, Medical School, Etc. Takes Strategy

Many students would rather get a root canal than ask for letters of recommendation. They aren’t sure how many letters they need, who they should ask, when they should ask, or how to ask for them. If you’re wondering how to get excellent letters of recommendation, whether it’s for an undergraduate, graduate, or professional degree (e.g., medical school, law school), a job application, or a funding opportunity, read on, because we are going to demystify the process so you can get great letters of recommendation.

This is the first entry in a multi-part series on getting letters of recommendation. Here, we provide an overview of the process and answer basic questions. Subsequent posts delve into more detail for complicated topics. Note, we (Dr. Cristie and Coach Alecia) work primarily with current and aspiring graduate and professional students. However, the process of getting strong letters of recommendation is the same whether you’re applying to college, funding opportunities, or a position in the job market. So, if you’re not a grad student, don’t let our focus on graduate school cause you to think this isn’t useful information for you.

Purpose of Letters of Recommendation

Letters of recommendation are an opportunity for application committees to evaluate skills not easily seen through transcripts, resumes, or standardized test scores. Whether you are applying to graduate school, a competitive funding application, or your first job, that overall purpose remains the same. MIT describes them as an opportunity to “show impressive characteristics beyond their own self-advocacy.”¹

Keeping that purpose in mind is vital when determining how many letters you need, who to ask, etc. What differs across letters of recommendation for different targets is the skills being evaluated. For example, a law school admissions committee might need to evaluate your level of independence and professionalism, a job application might need to evaluate your ability to work in teams, and a scholarship might need to know about your dedication to a particular cause. Your letters of recommendation serve as an external verification of the skills you highlight in your personal statement. Moreover, if you are applying to something that doesn’t have a personal statement component(e.g., some job applications), it serves as the only testament to some of these skills.

When you’re deciding who to ask and how many letters to ask for, knowing which skills and attributes the evaluator is looking for is vital for getting outstanding letters of recommendation for grad school, medical school, scholarships, or whatever you’re applying to.

How Many Letters of Recommendation Do You Need?

A lot of students want to know how many letters of recommendation they need for their grad school or medical school application. The answer to this question is based on two considerations.

1. What is the minimum and maximum number of letters of recommendation the application allows?
2. How many strong letters of recommendation can you realistically get?

Ideally, your answer to question two lies somewhere between the minimum and maximum number of letters of recommendation from question one. If you can get more than the minimum number of letters, then you should include as many as you can, provided they are strong letters. No letter is better than a mediocre letter, as long as you have the minimum number of letters required for the application.

Most grad school programs ask for between two and four letters of recommendation. This varies by the university and the program you’re applying to. Most medical schools require a minimum of three letters of recommendation and set a maximum of five or six. Law schools generally require two or three, with a maximum of four to five letters of recommendation. Scholarships and fellowships usually ask for two or three. Many job applications don’t ask for letters of recommendation (they call references instead), but those that do usually ask for two to three.

Who to Ask for Letters of Recommendation

There are several things to consider when determining who to ask for a recommendation for grad school, med school, or other applications. When deciding who to request a letter from, answer the following questions:

1. Out of your teachers, professors, supervisors, and colleagues, who know you well enough to endorse your skills?
2. Which skills can each of them endorse? The skills they can endorse are the ones you used when you worked with them or studied under them.
3. What are the credentials of your prospective letter writers?
4. If you have more potential letters than you can submit (lucky person you), what is the best combination of letter writers to demonstrate the breadth of your skills and letter writer credentials to demonstrate you have the skills the evaluators are looking for? For example, if you have three letter writers who all have great credentials, but they can only testify to one set of skills, then it’s better not to only ask for letters of recommendation from those three people. Substitute a less credentialed letter writer who can testify to other skills for one of the more credentialed letter writers.

How to Ask for Letters of Recommendation

A lot of students get very nervous when asking for letters of recommendation. They think they are inconveniencing people, that perhaps the professor (or supervisor or whomever) doesn’t think that highly of them, that it’s been too long since they spoke to the prospective letter writer, etc. Let me alleviate these concerns:

1. Writing letters of recommendation for students is part of the job for faculty members and supervisors. Provided that you make it as easy as possible for them to write the letter, and you are giving them adequate notice, it’s no big deal.
2. Your letter writers are adults. They are not required to write letters of recommendation. If they do not feel comfortable writing you a letter (e.g., they don’t feel they know you well enough, it’s been too long, they don’t have enough time, etc.), they can say no, so there’s no harm in asking.

The easiest way to ask for a letter of recommendation is to write an email along the lines of:

Good Morning Professor X,

I’m applying to several graduate programs this fall (University of Something, University of Another Something, and University of the Last Something). I am writing to ask if you would be willing to write a strong letter of recommendation highlighting our work together on Project Y. The deadline for the earliest program is December 1st. If this is something you’d be comfortable doing, I would send you supporting materials (e.g., my draft personal statement, my CV, and a brief description of the program) four weeks in advance. I appreciate your consideration.

Sincerely, Student Q.

Ensuring you get a good letter of recommendation is a bit more involved than simply asking for a letter, and I’ll be discussing the process in another post shortly, but the actual “asking” portion is as easy as that. Keep the letter short, polite, and to the point. Faculty and supervisors are busy people. Don’t clutter your letter with a bunch of information they don’t need yet. Save the details for after they’ve agreed.

When to Ask for Letters of Recommendation for Grad School, Med School, etc.

When to ask for a letter of recommendation is a much easier question. The answer to this doesn’t depend on whether you need your letter of recommendation for grad school, medical school, a funding opportunity, or a job.

Ideally, you will send the request for the letter of recommendation six to eight weeks before the application deadline. Four weeks before the deadline, you send the supporting information; two weeks before the deadline, you send a reminder to your letter writers; one week before the deadline, you send another reminder to anyone who hasn’t provided their letter yet; then follow up again the day before and the day it’s due if there are still outstanding letters.

In a less ideal timeline, you can send the request for the letter two to four weeks before the letters of recommendation are due. Be sure to have the supporting material ready when the letter writer agrees. Note, the less time you give the letter writer, the less time they have to think about, compose, and revise your letter of recommendation, which means it might not be as strong as it otherwise could be. That’s why we recommend about six weeks in advance.

In a tight timeline: Let’s say you find out about a scholarship opportunity that has a deadline less than two weeks away. You can still ask (and apologize for the short notice), but have supporting information ready. In this case, the letter writer might want you to draft a letter of recommendation for yourself that they can tailor accordingly. This is not uncommon in some fields, even when you aren’t under a tight deadline, so be sure to ask your letter writer if they want you to draft one. Most students feel uncomfortable even suggesting such a thing, so here’s some language you can use to determine if this is expected of you: “I understand that in some fields, the applicant is expected to draft a letter of recommendation for themselves to use as a starting point. Is this something you want me to do?”

Writing Letters of Recommendation for Grad School, Medical School, etc.

That concludes my brief overview of the process and key points for getting strong letters of recommendation for college, graduate school, medical school, funding opportunities, and more. Sign up for our mailing list below to get notified of additions to this series, including: how to set yourself up to have plenty of people willing to write letters of recommendation, how to identify the skills admissions committees and evaluators are looking for in your letters of recommendation, and how to ensure your letter writers write good letters of recommendation, even if they aren’t amazing letter writers overall. Signing up also gives you access to free resources, like our Grad School Application Planning Guide that will help you figure out what you need to do to apply to graduate school or other professional degree programs (medical school, law school, etc.), and when to start each application component.

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1. MIT Admissions: https://mitadmissions.org/apply/parents-educators/writingrecs/ ↩︎