If you are a Living Leadership Program member, a member of the Student Leadership Council, or a former student in the Leadership Development: Humanities 2210 course and would like to request a letter or recommendation from me, please visit this link: https://forms.gle/txH4zHZgaS4U96Xi9

Students, please check out my 5 step guide to requesting letters that will help you get the BEST recommendations for your applications! “Requesting Letters of Recommendation” guide for students

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I remember the first time I received a letter of recommendation request from a student. I was new to my role in Student Activities and had been advising a student organization part-time. The student making the request had been involved with the group, but had a lot of challenges. They asked me via email with a single line: “Can you write a letter for me?” and that was the request.

I stared at the request on my screen…

I had very little to work with here…

Not long after this experience I developed my first “Letter of Recommendation Request Form” and wrote a printed guide to hand out to students. The guide was written to help them think strategically about their potential letter-writers, learn how to make the request in person or via email, and how to follow up and express thanks to the letter-writers.

In conversations with faculty colleagues, I realized that many students were required to gather letters of recommendation without any guidance on how to actually do it.

About 15+ years and ~100 letters later, things have changed in the world of college transfer and scholarship applications. I wrote and rewrote my guide as a blog post (you can read it here) and moved my questionnaire into a google form (you can see it here) to gather student requests. The form includes a field to submit the required “Office of Records authorization form” as many students did not realize this is required if the letter shares any personally identifiable information from a student’s record. More on this below.

Collecting requests this way reduces my inbox traffic and allows me to easily access the information I need to write letters from any device if I am away from the office.

A Note on FERPA Compliance

The Family Policy Compliance Office requires under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA):

“Statements made by a person making a recommendation that are made from that person’s personal observation or knowledge do not require a written release from the student who is the subject of the recommendation. However, if personally identifiable information obtained from a student’s education record is included in the letter of recommendation (grades, GPA, attendance, etc.), the writer is required to obtain a signed release from the student, which 1) specifies the records that may be disclosed, 2) states the purpose of the disclosure, and 3) identifies the party or class of parties to whom the disclosure can be made.” AACRAO FERPA 2006 Guide

Basically, if you are writing a letter than includes personally identifiable information from the student’s academic record, you must have a written release. If you speak from your personal observations, the release is not required. I give students the option to submit the form or not, the majority do not.

Sample Questions for Creating a Request Form

Here are the questions I currently use on my form. Feel free to use them as inspiration for your own.

Section 1: Student Information

• Full name as you would like it to appear on the letter:
• College and program where you are applying for admission or scholarship name / organization details:
• Why did you choose this college and program or scholarship / organization?
• What career are you planning to pursue?
• Briefly discuss your leadership strengths, skills you possess, organizational skills you used in a project, or skills that others have noted about you:
• Is there any additional information that may be helpful in writing your recommendation or is there information that you would specifically like included about you?

Section 2: Leadership & Activities

You should list the involvement details of your activity or role / position and the dates of your involvement (ex. 2021-2023 or spring 2021). You may include a link to a resume if it includes the relevant information.

• Share a link to a resume or your ChapLife co-curricular transcript:
• List COD activities in which you have participated and the involvement dates (clubs, organizations, honor societies, athletic teams and programs – (n/a if not applicable):
• List out-of-school activities (volunteer, athletics, other organizations or groups – (n/a if not applicable):
• List all relevant work experience (paid work, both past and present – (n/a if not applicable): 
• List all awards and honors (n/a if not applicable):
• Is there any additional information that may be helpful in writing your recommendation or is there information that you would specifically like included about your activities?

Section 3: Application Information

If the scholarship or institution application has an information sheet or details about what they seek in an applicant, please copy and paste that information here or share a link to the website where the information is listed.

Final Thoughts: Mindful Letter-Writing

I feel honored when a student asks me to write on their behalf and a deep sense of responsibility to do it thoughtfully as others have done for me throughout my academic life. The students I teach and advise sometimes have significant challenges they have overcome or traumatic events they have experienced. On the form I ask if there is anything they would specifically like included about themselves. This sometimes means I am asked to share information about their struggles. When I write, I think about the “80/20 phoenix/ashes” rule shared by AdmissionsMom and McNeilAdmissions. If I am asked to share information about a student’s difficulty or trauma, I “tell the gain, not the pain” about the experience and how the student has grown and lived into their values or developed their strengths.

There is a growing discourse about the “trauma admissions essay” in the literature and public sphere and how it places pressure on Black and other marginalized student populations to trauma dump in their essays. When writing letters, I am conscious about perpetuating expectations that students must have a triumphant survival story or overcome impossible odds to succeed. I do this because I was a student who suffered a traumatic event in my senior year of high school and felt pressured to write about my pain in my college essays and personal statements. We can and should release students from these expectations. For additional reading, check out:

• Addressing Trauma in the College Essay Writing Process by Ashley Lipscomb
• The ‘T’ Word: Resisting Expectations To Share Trauma In College Essays by Aya M. Waller-Bey
• When I Applied to College, I Didn’t Want to ‘Sell My Pain’ by Elijah Megginson

I hope this resource is useful to anyone hoping to update or streamline their letter of recommendation writing process. Wishing you happy letter-writing!

Do you have additional tips or strategies? Contact me!