Sample Recommendation Letters (Page 2 of 3) in pdf

Outstanding letter

This is the letter you want to have written about you. I have written these letters for a few people, and I want to write one for you if

you give me the raw material to work with. The reason this is an outstanding letter is that it provides detailed descriptions of many

qualities that admissions committees and employers seek: hard work, independence, creativity, problem solving ability, and the ability

to get along with people. Mr. Smith is seeking a residency in orthopaedic surgery, so it is also useful to have an evaluation of Mr.

Smith’s dissection skills mentioned in the letter. Another noteworthy aspect of this letter is that it is detailed and provides specific

anecdotes of outstanding performance. People who read letters of recommendation often look for this because it demonstrates that the

person writing the letter actually knows the details of the applicant’s work experience. At the end of your time in my lab, I will ask

everyone (staff and other students) who has worked with you to provide anecdotes of outstanding performance that I can include in

your letter.

Dear Selection Committee,

I am writing this letter to give my highest possible recommendation for Mr. Smith. I know Mr. Smith through his work in

my laboratory. Mr. Smith first approached me two years ago about the possibility of work in my laboratory for a summer. At our

first meeting I described the general outline of the project the he might work on. He asked good questions and appeared intelligent.

He then went to the library and found many papers on the subject and read them carefully. He did this independently - I did not ask

him to do this. I learned that he had done this at our second meeting, and I was quite impressed at his motivation and independence.

Mr. Smith obtained funding from a program at our University to work in the lab for a summer.

During that summer, Mr. Smith demonstrated the ability to work independently with great creativity and enthusiasm. He

also put in many long hours. He worked as hard as my best graduate student. I teamed Mr. Smith with another student to work on a

project involving testing of patients having shoulder pathology. The project included recruiting patients, testing patients using

biomechanical instrumentation, and data analysis. Mr. Smith excelled in each one of these areas. His interpersonal skills were

excellent. He “schmoozed” the clinical staff to facilitate recruitment of patients. He tested the patients professionally. Sometimes

this testing required long days due to the extensive setup and calibration of equipment each morning before the clinic began operation.

He stayed after the testing sessions to back up data, clean up the area, and start data processing programs to run overnight. He was

usually the first one in the lab in the morning and the last to leave in the evening.

The other student working with Mr. Smith commented favorably about working with Mr. Smith. He said the Mr. Smith got

along well with everyone, pulled his own weight on the project, and had the ability to compromise with other team members. One

incident illustrates this point. There is a staff member in an adjoining lab that is a rather prickly person who has had many problems

with students in the past. Mr. Smith had to interact with this staff person in order to get his project done. Mr. Smith was able to find

a common interest with this staff person, which was folk dancing, and build a rapport based on this mutual interest. At the end of the

summer the staff person noted what a pleasure it was to work with Mr. Smith.

Mr. Smith also volunteered to help others in the lab. One of the other students was doing a project on knee biomechanics,

and it required harvesting knees from the University’s morgue. Mr. Smith volunteered to help harvest the knees on several occasions.

I asked the graduate student in charge of that project about Mr. Smith, and he commented that Mr. Smith has excellent dissection

skills.

I was especially taken by Mr. Smith’s creative mind and independent work ethic. He continued to read the literature

independently and generate interesting hypotheses. We met about every other week, and at several meetings he presented papers and

information that was new to me. By the end of the summer he was introducing me to scientific papers that were directly relevant to

his study that I hadn’t seen before. Mr. Smith also showed remarkable problem solving ability. Our instrumentation system began

having problems midway through his experiment. Mr. Smith spent a full weekend troubleshooting the system. He discovered there

was a loose wire in the A/D connection box.

Mr. Smith is going to be first author on a manuscript that he is preparing for publication. He followed through on his

promise to write the manuscript during his M2 year. Moreover, he handled the manuscript revisions and saw the manuscript through

to publication. This illustrates his high level of motivation.

Sample Recommendation Letters Page 2