More about recommendation letters

[aioria]

Hi TestMagicians !

I have another doubt . My proffesor told me to writte the recommendation letter by myself .
I have written one draft one page long .

I showed this letter to 2 of my friends , and they told me they think one page it is too long . However I made a search in google and found that the best recommendation letters are more than one page long. According to my friends
english people want to hear just brief sentences , and there is no need to give detailed information

My friends have been accepted in Mcgill and Toronto Ecole , they both used short letters.

What do you suggest me to do ??? Do you think I have to write my letter shorter ???
I dont know what to do
Please help me


Airoia !

[omogbolahan01]

aioria,
I tried using the username and password you gave for the toefl material, but it didnt work!Did you change the password or did i miss something out. my email is omogbnolahan01@yahoo.com. i will appreciate a response from you thank you.

[minud]

Hey Aioria

No I think one page is fine ..just don't make it more than one page . With letter head on top and designation at bottom ...total it shud be of one page not more than that.

Minu

[aioria]

aioria,
I tried using the username and password you gave for the toefl material, but it didnt work!Did you change the password or did i miss something out. my email is omogbnolahan01@yahoo.com. i will appreciate a response from you thank you.

I know , something wrong happened with the e-mail account . A person must have changed the password . The password is not working anymore

[aioria]

Hey Aioria

No I think one page is fine ..just don't make it more than one page . With letter head on top and designation at bottom ...total it shud be of one page not more than that.

Minu

Thank u Minu !
by the way did you have to write your letters by yourself too?

[Erin]

Recos are the one part of the application process that you are supposed to have the least control over; they should therefore be the most "natural" part of the application (i.e., the least polished part of your app).

I've worked with many people who've told me that their bosses told them to write the reco, and their bosses would later sign it. But this directive actually makes things harder than you would imagine, as you are expected to create a document that mimics what a big exec would create. A huge part of the problem is that bosses from big companies don't want to spend their time writing letters of recommendation for some newbie employee who's trying to leave the company to get into a killer program.

It's hard, I know. But of all the parts of the application, this one has to seem the most objective.

Back to your question--one or two pages is fine; just make sure that your reco is believable.

[joey]

No offense to aioria. These are my views and are in now way intended to target aioria alone.

No doubt recos used by the Univs play an important role in the selection procedure. But is this system doing justice to the candidates whose guides are driven by principles and ethics. It is impossible for many recommenders to write an unbiased comment on his students performance. They even depute the job to the candidate himself. In other cases, they greatly exaggerate over the candidate's performance. In spite of these loop-holes, I fail to understand why is it even included in the selection procedure. Critics would argue that recos form only one part of the whole procedure and that they ask for 3 recos not just one. But what if two candidates are equivalently placed otherwise and the decision has to be made on the basis of recos only.

Joey

[minud]

Thank u Minu !
by the way did you have to write your letters by yourself too?

Yes I had to write my letters

[minud]

No offense to aioria. These are my views and are in now way intended to target aioria alone.

No doubt recos used by the Univs play an important role in the selection procedure. But is this system doing justice to the candidates whose guides are driven by principles and ethics. It is impossible for many recommenders to write an unbiased comment on his students performance. They even depute the job to the candidate himself. In other cases, they greatly exaggerate over the candidate's performance. In spite of these loop-holes, I fail to understand why is it even included in the selection procedure. Critics would argue that recos form only one part of the whole procedure and that they ask for 3 recos not just one. But what if two candidates are equivalently placed otherwise and the decision has to be made on the basis of recos only.

Joey

Yes I also feel same thing. Whats use of recos ?? Most of recos are very general. Also teachers at my college usually say that student is above 5% even when he or she is prolly ranked last in class. Very unfair to earthlings who work hard in whole degree when in the end all get same recos.

In my case I had to write my own recos. I can go on exaggerating abt myself and get it signed like that only. Whats use of such letter, anybody can do same thing!!!!
Does that mean more shameless the person is in wrting abt oneself and more better one can write English , better is their reco?? very unfair

[bnm]

hey,
this is my experience with one of my prof...
i gave him my versiion of the writtern letter....( it was a page lenght).....
he took it and said that he would cut it short...and write it again himself in his own writing style.....
i just reminded him about my rank in the class and convinced him about its importance ......
thats it ... i thing that a prof. riting it himself with whom u have worked is the best way... and if he is little bit artistic in his expression ....he can just write about thy qualities....and ohter stufff....
the top 5% tthing is good and in fact everybody rites it .....but if the letter of recommendation is written well than it itself makes the difference.....
hope that i get a decent letter of recommendation....as all of my recommenders are consdering to rite the letter of recommendation's themselves.....
i always consider letter of recommendation's, sop and acad score to be related.....as they combined give a real picture of a candidate....
but if they don't then god save western univs...just like election systems fiasco.......hahaaaaaaa
bye...