I’ve always wondered what one does when they’re in a position that they get a lot of requests for recommendation letters and have to decide what to do when the person is a miserable failure who you wouldn’t honestly recommend to anyone.
Ever told a person flat out that no, you won’t recommend them? Or if you’re hilarious, given a letter of non-recommendation?
I write letters so tepid that the recipient understands “This professor doesn’t think too much of this student” without my ever saying a bad word about him or her.
One of my profs turned me down when I asked him for a recommendation. He told me flat out that while he was impressed with a project I did, he couldn’t recommend me because I wasn’t on time enough for his standards. Which is accurate; I’m usually running a few minutes late wherever I go.
BTW, My father, who used to be a professor and a bit of a dickish one at that, told me that I should NEVER merely ask “for a recommendation” but rather ask the professor if they can “recommend me highly.” Some will damn with faint praise rather than refuse. But even dickish professors won’t agree to give a good recommendation and then do the opposite.
Maybe, maybe not. Back when I was a student, I would only ask someone whom I thought knew my strengths and saw my potential and would be able to write a letter or recommendation that would be beneficial to me.
Now, it seems, some students will ask anyone for a letter. If you’re going to ask someone for a letter, be prepared to deal with the consequences. Plus, there are some students that just have no clue about their actual skill set and assume they will get a good recommendation if the professor or lecturer is “nice”.
I’ve never been important enough for my recommendation to matter.
A million years ago, a class mate in high school asked a teacher for a recommendation for a specific university, and was told “I don’t think this school is for you.” Said classmate applied anyway with someone else’s recommendation letter, was rejected, and ended up going to its (inferior) rival school.
If your grades are good but you don’t distinguish yourself otherwise, at least I can write something about your ability. If your grades are not that good but you participate enthusiastically and ask intelligent questions, I can write something about that.
But if your grades are terrible and you never participated in class and never said a single thing to me personally prior to the request, what can I possibly write? It would be better for you to ask someone else for a letter who can honestly say something good about you.
Yes. Luckily, I was still a grad student at the time, in an entirely different field from the student’s major, so I was able to frame it as “You would be better off getting a recommendation from a full-time professor who knows something about your coursework in this area.” Of course, the real reason was that the student had gotten an undistinguished B- in my freshman comp class three years earlier, and that had been a gift.
I really wonder whether that was her only B. Otherwise, I can’t imagine why she picked me to ask in the first place.
I have sort of refused, by allowing the student to say “never mind.” I had a student contact me for a LOR who had not really done that great in my class - okay final grade, but only by the skin of his teeth, and didn’t come to class a lot, didn’t hand in a number of small assignments, etc. Great participation when he was there, really understood the material, but his work ethic was weak.
He emailed me to ask, and my reply was, “I’ll be happy to, but please keep in mind that ethically I will have to discuss all aspects of your performance in my class, not just the good ones.” His response was a self-deprecating joke, and a thanks to me for being honest.
I haven’t refused, but have told students that they could probably find some other instructor who could give them a better letter.
For those who did insist on an (undeserved) letter, I was practiced at faint praise.
There were more students who I initially approached with “If you want a letter of recommendation, I would be delighted to write one for you…it is one of the joys of my profession” Good students were highly appreciated in my classes.
It was the first time I was asked, I didn’t remember the student very well, and didn’t know what to say. If I had it to do over, I would have written it anyway (after subtly letting the student know how generic it would have to be, so they could decide whether they still wanted it).
I have several times told students that I would write a letter for them if they really wanted me to, but also suggested that surely they *must *be able to find another faculty member in whose classes they had performed better than in mine.
One time I did refuse to write a recommendation letter for a student, because the student had the nerve to ask me this after I had informed him that I had discovered that he had plagiarized most of his MS thesis and that I planned to file a charge against him with the university’s Academic Honor Board.