<p>Hi Everyone!</p>
<p>Could I get a some tips on getting recommendation letters from professors? I hear that it is more of a challenge for transfer student because they have only 2 years to develop comfortable relationships with professors once they get into a UC.</p>
<p>I didn’t even know you had to form relationships with profs. I thought outperforming the rest of the class or at least getting an A warranted a letter of recommendation.</p>
<p>Do research work and go to office hours. Unless you talk to professors outside of class, they probably won’t even know your name.</p>
<p>rikizle is right. Make sure you go to their office hours and get in good with a research PI. Also it would be even better if you were one of the top students in the class (no pressure lol).</p>
<p>While professors are usually happy to write a letter of recommendation for an ‘A’ student (or even an ‘A-’ one) it won’t do much good if they can’t sell you to admissions committees and Potential Advisors. That is where office hours and research come into play. A high grade in a class might mean you are good student, but seeing your ability to collect and analyze data and then produce polished work from it is probably the best measure for a professor to determine your suitability for graduate study.</p>
<p>They don’t know that you are transfer. Just a normal student for them. </p>
<p>Should be simple to get a LOR. Just go to office hours and be active. Do well in the class also. </p>
<p>I visit and email some of my professors even though I am the class has been over with.</p>
<p>What exactly can you do in office hours to make a good impression? Based on my experience, which is to say, when my friends go, the purpose seems entirely to either ask for help with a question or to get a grade fixed. For students who are already excelling in a class by getting an A, these situations are rarely applicable.</p>
<p>Do you talk about yourself? The professor? News stories you’ve read relating to the field? This will work to get them to know your name but it is largely a waste of everyone’s time unless you are already a student doing work for the prof in which case getting a letter of recommendation is simply a matter of doing satisfactory work.</p>
<p>^You’d be surprised, I’m on extremely good terms with both chairs of my Psych department because I’ve talked to them after class about things I heard, or things I found interesting during the lecture, or just if I run into them around campus. One time I got into a talk with the main head because a friend had to return a CD to his class from the previous semester he found in his room and we talked for 30 minutes on everything from politics to Drawn Together. The other head has already offered to write me a letter of rec if it might help get me into UCLA/become TAP certified (even though they don’t accept the letters) just on the chance it might give me ANY help. </p>
<p>My point is if you’re on good terms with the professor you guys can just talk about random crap and it helps. These people are generally your colleagues to some extent, so talk about interesting stuff in the field. The head of the psych department is a member of the APA Division on the psychology of sleep, I could easily talk to him about my interest in hypnosis, or what I read on cracked about sleep deprivation leading to increased REM sleep when you DO get some. Things like that. Make sense?</p>