<p>I just started my senior year and I know that students are advised to build relationships with professors in lieu of grad school recommendations.</p>
<p>I plan to work for 2 years after college before going to grad school, but in the meantime I am clueless about how to build a relationship with my professors.</p>
<p>I have had a couple of really outstanding professors over the years who I really liked, and who liked me as well. I still see them around campus but usually just say hi to him/her and small talk, not really a student-professor relationship.</p>
<p>Go to their office hours regularly. Even if you are not in their class. Most of the time professors will sit in their offices with no visitors as most students don’t take advantage of these hours.</p>
<p>You need to get your LOR’s before you actually leave the school. It will become infinitely harder for you to get your LOR’s once you’re not a student.</p>
<p>Just ask them straight up that you are looking for an LOR. If you were a good student and they liked you, they will have no problem with this. You don’t really have to alter your behavior for them to recognize you and agree to write your LOR.</p>
<p>That said, since you will be working I’m going to assume that this will not be a blind LOR? (Some schools require blind submissions. The LOR’s need to go directly from teacher to graduate school in a sealed envelope)</p>
<p>Going to their office hours is really important. One of my recommenders is a professor who I had for my first semester freshman year and last semester senior year. In the middle, I visited him when deciding on classes to ask him about the professors and materials. I talked to him about my study abroad trip. We chatted a few times a semester every semester. He wrote me a great recommendation (I think- I got in everywhere I applied!)</p>
<p>What you want to do is give them something to talk about in their letters - something that sets you apart from the mass of students in their classes. Why are you, especially, worthy of graduate study? It could be a research project, a specific internship/student job, a program-related extracurricular activity (a journalism student’s work on the college paper, for example) or an outstanding senior research paper - anything that makes you specially qualified and uniquely suited.</p>
<p>I agree with the last post. You don’t want to go to their office and be fake or come off as doing the minimum to get a LOR. You want the professor to know that you are truly trying to get a good LOR and that you can become a dedicated graduate student.</p>
<p>What if you don’t have any senior research project? Can talking to the professors about future plans and your thoughts on choosing schools be helpful as well?</p>
<p>Yes. You can even come up with one with a professor. Go in and say, “I’m thinking of doing a senior research projects. I’m interested in X, Y, and Z. Do you have any suggestions?”</p>
<p>Go to a professor you like at the beginning of the year, and say, “I think I want to go to graduate school in the future. Can you give me advice about what to look for in a graduate program? And also how to make myself a better candidate? What can I do now to prepare myself?”</p>
<p>Answering those questions is an important part of their job; none of them is going to turn you away even if he didn’t like you as much as you liked him. And that discussion easily segues into a discussion of how they can help you get where you want to go, including writing LORs, and if not them who? Your goal is to start an advisory relationship that will be ongoing, but you can do it in a way that gives the professor an out to give you advice but send you to someone else for more help.</p>
<p>Remember, every one of them was in your shoes once upon a time, and had to ask for that kind of advice and build that kind of relationship. It’s part of the Circle of Life (Academic Division).</p>
<p>As an addendum to the last post (Which was very good): Don’t force yourself to try to be pals with your teachers just because you want a LOR. They will see this coming a mile away. Be direct about exactly what it is that you want from them.</p>