In your letter, you may feel obligated to provide potentially negative or neutral information. If this is the case, consider adding a request to contact you for further information regarding the student. You might wish to write a very positive recommendation letter but also feel the need to explain more fully the obstacles your student has had to overcome, or perhaps extenuating circumstances for their poor performance in the classroom. Remember, if you feel that you cannot write anything positive about the student requesting a recommendation letter, it is in both your best interests to decline. Remember to choose examples that are relevant to the university to which your student is applying. For example, if your student is intending to study pre-law at her college of choice, you might focus on the three qualities or examples that demonstrate her aptitude for that area of study. Your recommendation letter should not read like a list of positive but unrelated examples and attributes.
How to write a Recommendation Letter Although readers of recommendation letters can be desensitized and therefore skeptical of over-blown praise, this also means that any criticism of a student stands out and might mean the difference between an acceptance or rejection of their application . Letter of Recommendation Criticism of your student should be thoughtful and tempered by providing context. For example, you might include in your letter a discussion of Student X’s poor performance for one semester, but also note that this was due to challenges at home. Sometimes the college or university will invite your assessment of the applicant’s weaknesses or areas for improvement. If that is the case, provide thoughtful criticism and cite the invitation as you give the critique. Recommendation latter restrain your criticism to one paragraph or less in the letter, making sure to avoid ambiguous wording which might seem like veiled criticism instead of an honest assessment of areas your student can improve . For example, the phrase “to the best of my limited knowledge” suggests that you do not know the student that well. Use direct and affirmative statements such as, “I know that her complexity of thought will grow in the intellectual atmosphere created by your university.” Free Recommendation latter You could also tie criticism of the student to your own ethics as a writer of recommendation letter template. For example, you might state that as a recommended you feel obligated to give a balanced assessment of your student in contrast to the typical free recommendation letter which offers biased and suspect praise. Recommendation letters are so often filled with unearned and hyperbolic praise that their value as objective and accurate accounts of student achievement and character has decreased. Thus, readers of recommendation letters are hypersensitive to the language used by the writer, reading criticism where there is none intended.Often, ambiguous phrases are the culprit for communicating criticism.
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