Here are Rebecca’s tips on asking for letters of recommendation. YMMV: I don’t make claims about other professors’ needs and desires in this regard. It’s always best to ask.
- Sometimes students ask for general letters to be filed with Interfolio. For some things this is fine, but for art history (or other humanities) graduate school I recommend against using such letters if they are more than 2 or so years old. For this reason, I’m not likely to agree to write them if they are going to be used that much later. In order to write a good letter, I will want to know what you’ve been up to in the meantime, so it’s a more complicated process. I’ll need your current CV and personal statement, etc. I will do Interfolio letters for undergrads planning to apply e.g. to law school in a few years.
- There’s a big difference between writing a new letter and updating an old one. If you are asking for a new letter from someone who doesn’t know your current work well, especially if it’s an important one, please give ample notice – 2 months is not too much. Anything less than a month is impossible. If it’s a new letter I’ll need your CV and statement/proposal; if your application is for a dissertation grant I’ll also need your dissertation proposal and a recent chapter, if you have one.
- However, unless it’s summer or I’m otherwise occupied with travel, I am happy to have “update” letters requested as little as three weeks in advance. (Please do give me three weeks’ notice.) In fact, I’d rather not know about them more than 6 weeks in advance. This is not necessarily true of everyone, and it certainly behooves you to check your advisors’ preferences and travel schedules well in advance.
- I appreciate reminders: it is very helpful to get a reminder a week before, 3 days before, and 1 day before the letter is due. Seriously. This will not annoy me. You might ask other professors whether/how they prefer to receive reminders.
- If it is an update letter I do want to see updates on your current work.
- I also always need to see the specific proposal for the fellowship in order to write a letter for a fellowship. Please do not make me chase you down for the proposal. I need to see it at least a week before the letter is due. I do not need to see job letters though I am willing to read them and offer advice.
- Another bit of advice: fellowship proposals to go do research away from home need to include concrete specifics on what you need to look at and why, including details on the materials, how they are relevant to your work, collections they’re housed in, and steps taken to contact the relevant institutions.
- Please, please, please, always include the address to which the application is to be sent even if I am to give you the letter sealed and signed across the back for you to mail. To write a proper letter one needs what is known as the “inside address.”
- There’s generally no need to provide the envelope and certainly not the stamp. In fact, it’s usually a waste of both stamp and envelope, because I will put the letter in an official departmental envelope.
- When sending images (whether as part of materials for a letter of recommendation or as part of a dissertation chapter, etc.) please do not send them as individual images. Please put them all into one file. PDF seems to be the easiest; on a Mac, you can easily turn a Word file into a PDF by printing and choosing PDF as your “printer.” You can also send a large Word file using Yousendit.com or another large file sending service. A large single file that I can print all at once (and that includes figure numbers and captions – very important) is much better than individual image files that all have to be downloaded, kept in order, and somehow captioned by me. If your method of sending requires me to do anything more than just print a file, you are probably wasting your time — honestly, realistically, I just won’t look at the images if they’re not a simple download.
