Another example of: What Were They Thinking? (when they write reference letters for students applying to graduate school; 'they' being professors at the applicants' undergraduate institutions). Why mention a student's religion and degree of religious fervor in an application for a graduate program? It has no bearing on whether a student is accepted to the graduate program or not, and makes us question the judgment of the letter-writer because it suggests they don't know how to evaluate a student's potential for graduate studies.
It's clear I need to take a break from reading these files.
Students should not panic about the quirks of their letter-writers. There is a lot of information in each application packet, including 3 letters of reference. Admission is competitive, but no one with an otherwise strong application is going to be rejected because one letter-writer doesn't know how to write a reference letter. We also realize that students sometimes have only a few options of faculty who know them well enough to write a letter.
When I applied to grad school - my advisor from undergrad - who was the best old man ever - asked me to write the letter and he would add and edit what he thought was necessary...do you think that was odd? I got into all the top programs in my field so I didn't think anything of it, but now that graduation is looming and I think about my own future as a professor...it makes me go hmmmm....
ReplyDeleteAs long as the professor really did add and edit your text and just used your comments as guidelines to make sure he didn't miss something major about your background, it's OK. If you wrote about yourself "Twirly is the most brilliant person in the universe, will win a Nobel prize in the very near future, and was doing Ph.D. level work as a freshman", and that doesn't happen to be exactly true and he doesn't modify it, that would not be so ethical.
ReplyDeleteFrom my experience, a lot of professors asked me to draft reference letters about me. I hoped they could wrote something about me after I worked three years in their research group, but they thought letting me draft was a win-win solution. The only time some professors truly referred me in their words was when they did not want to take some political inconvenience to work with me and I had to transfer to continue to work in an area. It was a surprise to them the best researcher in the area was interested in me and asked for their opnions. They didn't say, in their letters, I will win a Noble prize, but they certainly implied it was possible. I was so touched by their words and almost wanted to stay. However, I questioned in the back of my mind, if they liked me that much why not just agree to be my advisors.
ReplyDeleteI haven't met many professors interested in their students much, especially their undergraduates, to write an informative reference letter. When a referee doesn't really know an applicant, too many other things can affect what words are on letters. I don't think you can tell more about an applicant from those letters than from his/her GRE scores, personal statement, interview and other his/her work.
I must admit in all the letters that I have written that I have never mentioned the religious convictions of any students wanting to get into graduate school (even when I knew what they were). On the other hand, there are a significant number of letters that I have read that mentions the nature of a potential students religious conviction. There are two possible rationales for why this might be appropriate. On one level the mentioning of a religious conviction demonstrates that the letter writer knows the applicant on more than just a vertical professor - student level since this is not the sort of personal information one can glean from T-shirt slogans. Demonstrating that the reference writer knows the student on multiple levels may give their letter of reference concerning the students character more weight. I am very suspicious of letters of reference that do not speak to the character of the student and I would put religious convictions in a different catagory of personal knowledge than knowing that the student was a competitive wind surfer. The second reason why a professor might mention religious convictions in a letter of reference for a potential student is that they in fact may be an important dynamic in group student - student relationships and the writer is trying to warn the potential supervisor that dropping this student into a research group of students from other faiths might be dangerous when the student attempts to "convert" the other students.
ReplyDeleteIt is also possible that the letter writer is intending the reference to be some form of assurance that the student is an ethical / responsible person but we have all seen enough televangelists to discount that possibility.
I am suddenly exceedingly grateful that I never saw what my reference letters said.
ReplyDelete