D’s favorite reach suggested she get a letter of rec from a current professor as she switched high schools senior year and is taking almost all coursework at a local public university. Her comp sci professor, who called her work “elegant” and asked to use it as an example in his other classes, agreed to send one but asked her to write the first draft. “I’m glad to give you a letter of recommendation. The way I work it is I ask you to write the first draft which I’ll probably edit a bit. This way, you can have the letter say exactly what you want for your purpose. Please email me the first draft and I’ll email back my suggested letter.”
She’s feeling bashful and paralyzed. Any idea what she should put in her letter? What types of things should she highlight?
I do not think she should draft her own letter. I am a professor and have written countless letters of recommendation. I would never ask any student to do this. I have asked for a student to provide a CV, a statement of purpose (for graduate applications), or a brag sheet of bullet points that I can incorporate, but an actual letter draft? No. This could backfire badly on your daughter. And the professor is lazy and unethical IMHO.
Is it a test? I find it odd that a comp sci professor, who I thought were strict about not allowing students to use other people’s code, would use someone else’s letter. I’d give him a list of bullet points, but I wouldn’t write the letter. If he can’t write a letter with that, I’d ask someone else.
Thank you for your input. It seemed odd to me, but I thought that must be what some professors do. A former roommate who is a professor said the same thing - that it’s very uncommon. It feels extremely uncomfortable for D, not to mention not helpful. She’s in high school - she doesn’t HAVE a professor’s perspective, so anything she wrote would duplicate what she’s already submitted, she feels. She did explain her interests and offer to meet with him. I told her to trust her discomfort on this.
A HS teacher who remembers her is going to write a better letter than a professor who is prepared to “edit” her own work.
Don’t over- think this. Writing your own recommendation is a bad idea, move on. Find a teacher at the former HS who can quickly write an enthusiastic 'this kid is so talented she’s taking all her classes at a local college" and be done.
She already has the high school teachers’ letters in; this was an additional one the admissions office thought might be helpful. But, yep, plenty of other things to do; no need to waste any more brain cells on this!
I am a professor who has asked students to do a first draft. If I have lead time, I ask for a cv, a copy of their personal statement/application/grant proposal, a list of concerns, the job description, etc. I have templates from writing hundreds of letters and can do a good one pretty fast. On the other hand, if they ask three days, even a week, before its due, or at the end of the semester, I will ask them to do a draft Without more lead time, I usually have trouble finding the hour or two it takes to write a great letter (for an undergraduate) and can use the student’s ideas to shape one.
The advice came close to the end of the semester. She waited until after the semester to ask. Not sure when it’s due, honestly. Got the impression from the professor’s emailed response that this is how he usually does it.
If it was the end of the semester and he has big classes, he may just be overwhelmed with grading, end of semester committee work, research deferred until the end of the semester. It’s hard to guess whether he uses the draft request as a screening tool to reduce the number of letters he writes or whether he is just out of time.
If she can write a good letter, with lots of specifics and quotes from him, she could try it, but it is very hard to write in an unfamiliar genre. Students have trouble with the writing format, not just the outrageous bragging needed to stand out. Your daughter, a HS student, will have a lot of trouble even if she has good specifics about her model project. Maybe you could attempt a draft with her?
If you want a rec letter from this guy, you probably should comply with his request. If you don’t want to comply with his request, then you probably aren’t going to get a rec letter from him.
I’m not a professor, but in my professional life I routinely ask the recommendee to do a first draft or at least an outline for me to work from. It is a pretty efficient way to transmit a lot of information and context to the recommender. Including things that the recommender might want to include but perhaps needs some reminding about.
Not all that much different, in my mind, from asking the recommendee to give me a soft copy resume and then also have a conversation about the situation being applied for.
Teachers usually ask for a “brag sheet” highlighting the students accomplishments and awards to assist them in writing the rec. I know there are parents who get involved in that process and turn the brag sheet into a draft of the letter they would like to see. I agree that if you want the letter from this teacher you will have to comply with the request or risk him writing a very mediocre rec.
It is very commmon, and there is no ethical problem. If the professor doesn’t approve of anything in the letter, he won’t sign it. There is so plagiarism issue, and there is no requirement for originality in such a letter. I have been asked to write my own letter letter a few times, and I comply - very happily. I can boast about myself better than anyone else can.
Personally, I don’t ask students to do it, but I do have a bank of previous letters I have prepared, and I just pull out one and tone it down or boost it up depending on the qualities of the current student who needs one.
Yeah, when I was a school teacher and wrote rec letters, those things would have been grossly beyond the pale to me, @sorghum . And if you’re recycling letters, you’re not that helpful–rec letters are only useful insofar as they contain personal anecdotes that reveal something about the student that isn’t duplicated elsewhere in the app.
In recycling a letter, you can insert whatever “anecdote” may be appropriate. The overall structure of the letter is the same. At university level the personal anecdotes are not the most useful, or may even not be very useful at all. The main thing is that someone with credibility affirms that student is intelligent, hardworking, gets on with people, can speak English, and by implication, if you enthuse over the student, they are not a thief, liar, or drunkard. The letter also serves to affirm that the student and profile is real. That they stayed up all night to care for the departmental cat having kittens is not important, in most fields.
I think it is false to pretend that we don’t “recycle” letters. When I get asked to write, I go to my letter files and look for the existing letter of a similar student (maybe one going to med school, international graduate student, applying for scholarship, or took same course). I begin writing over that letter. Now I don’t think the students are the same, and they don’t get the same letter, but the kinds of things I have to cover are the same. If you keep refining the genre, you get to the point where you never leave out an important accomplishment, character aspect, or rhetorical move.
Faculty write dozens (and dozens) of letters a year, or at least, the good ones do. We have to have ways to streamline it.
When I have applied to grad school and for fellowships, my rec writers wrote letters that mostly discussed the research projects I had worked on. Given that I was the only student working on these projects, I assume they did not recycle much when they wrote their letters.