Grad school letters of recommendation - how generic were yours?

[AreaCode707]

Heya guys. I'm starting to cast around for letters of rec for my graduate school application. I tended to stay in much closer touch with my profs than most of the students, from what I could tell. I made something of a habit of walking back with them to their office after class and just chatting. I nearly always had a stellar performance in their classes, at least the ones I'm asking for letters (graduated with a 3.77 gpa), and I'm at least friendly enough with the profs so that they know who I am and have recollections of conversations we had.

Now, the drawback is that I never worked with any of these profs on research projects, or as a teaching assistant. Taking 20-24 units a quarter, I just didn't have time. I was also a little young for most of the teaching assistant positions (graduated at 19).

With all the people that want letters of recommendations from the professors, they must be used to turning out fairly generic letters. Can you get into grad school with those kind of "ho hum" letters? Does it sound to you like the profs know me well enough to write something noticeable? Or do the letters not really play much of a part in the admissions process at all?

I'm not really worried, since I'm not dead-set on grad school, I'm just curious how this might affect getting in. I'm applying to the University of Washington communications department. Oh, and I haven't taken the GRE yet, but I did fairly well (above average) on the practice exam.

Cliff's notes - are my letters of recommendation good enough to get me into grad school?

 

[her209]

GREs???

 

[TheWart]

Originally posted by: her209
GREs???

Graduate Record Examinations


bump for ya, gonna have to do the same this fall :frown:

 

[gururu]

Letter 1: World reknown organic chemist. Got an A in his class, never spoke a word to him until 5 years later when I needed a letter. Very generic letter.
Letter 2: World renown physical chemist. Same deal.
Letter 3: Employer with a stellar career in the pharmaceutical industry. Very personal letter.
Letter 4: Employer same deal as previous.

It sounds like you can get some dandy letters from these professors.

good luck!

 

[CanOWorms]

I'm going to graduate school this fall for engineering, so the process may be differerent. I provided each professor my resume and a transcript because they still don't know the full you if you've only taken a course or two with them. Some schools seemed to ask the professor to send the recommendation letter by themself while others seemed to want them in with the entire application. For the ones that asked for the professors to send them, I provided a stamped and addressed envelope for the professor along with the deadlines, other info, etc. The ones where you pick back up, the professors sign over the seal so you can't see/tamper with what they said. So, I couldn't really tell if they were generic or not! If I had to guess, they were probably generic

A lot of the schools also had survey forms about the student that the professors fill out.

 

[PrincessGuard]

Your GPA is probably high enough to offset the mediocre letters. Last year the CS dept. at UCD admitted pretty much everyone with a >3.8. Or at least that's what they told us.

 

[AreaCode707]

Originally posted by: PrincessGuard
Your GPA is probably high enough to offset the mediocre letters. Last year the CS dept. at UCD admitted pretty much everyone with a >3.8. Or at least that's what they told us.

Yeah, but this is grad school, different department, and different school. UCD is sucking in students like they're trying to rehydrate themselves with them.

 

[FeathersMcGraw]

I got letters of recommendation from three different professors, but I gave them SASE with my applications, I never saw the letters. Of those, I'd really only worked closely with one of them, so I assume the others were fairly generic, although I was getting As in their respective classes.

I was accepted to grad school, though, so something worked.

 

[vegetation]

It depends on the program. If you're applying for a Ph.D type research degree, then you have a slim chance of getting in without demonstrating research experience at the undergraduate level. That's the what letters of rec are for. If it's more of a watered down type of program, then I suppose good grades and test scores are good enough.