Over the summer, I volunteered for 75 hours at University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. I sent the required email to receive my letter of recommendation, but got no word from the volunteer office for months. Finally, after weeks of unreturned phone calls and emails, I finally get the woman in charge of the volunteer office. I gently ask her if she received my emails and if should could please send me that letter since I’m applying to colleges soon. She said yes, she’d have one in the mail soon and she’ll email me a copy.
Today, I received the letter (never got the email copy). It read thus (I’ve omitted my last name):
Okay, first of all, I didn’t work in the Shock Trauma Operating Room. I worked on the Shock Trauma floor and the General Operating Room – two completely different departments.
Second, doesn’t this letter sound a bit, y’know, formletterish? There’s absolutely nothing personal about me in the letter, and I’d hate to think that I got the exact same letter as the volunteer who showed up for his shift and disappeared for three and a half hours, only to show up again five minutes before quitting time.
For an institution that prides itself as one of the top teaching hospitals in the nation, and as an institution that knows most of its volunteers aspire to be future doctors and nurses, I’m almost embarrassed to include this letter with my application.
What do you think? Am I being a bit persnickety, and if not, what should I do?
It is a form letter, from a large institution, on behalf of someone, who they’ve invested nothing in, one of probably thousands of volunteers who’ve given some time there. Really, it’s all you can expect from a volunteer office. It sound like the woman who generated this letter didn’t actually work with you – probably she just places volunteers in various departments and gets some feedback from evaluations sent to her by staff. So you really shouldn’t expect anything more.
If you want something more glowing, you have to get to whoever you actually worked for, and ask them for one. Given that you worked only 75 hours, which is hardly enough time to train you to do anything useful, I wouldn’t hold out a lot of hope for that either. But it can’t hurt to try.
I know you didn’t mention this, but as long as we’re calling it badly written, it indeed contains one of my pet peeves: “over 74.40”. At that point, you know exactly how much it is, not how much it’s “over.” “Over” must be associated with a round number: “over 70.”
(“Be sure to try out My Dead Uncle Larry’s Fruit Salad. It contains over two kinds of fruit.”)
There’s really nothing wrong with the letter. You volunteered for a brief period and did a fine job. If you want more, you’d probably need to have a close relationship with someone.
Want to hear bad? I read a letter for a student applying to our grad program. The letter was laudatory in the first three paragraphs, and then the writer blasted the student for asking for the letter at the last minute. We felt that was tacky - the writer should have flat out refused to write a letter instead of torpedoing the guy’s application. He didn’t get in for other reasons, but we actually felt sorry for him - had he met the other criteria, that letter wouldn’t have hurt him.
Another letter was from a guy’s supervisor in a casino (his part-time job). It made no mention of his skills relating to our grad program but did note that he dressed well and was always on time.
Another guy wrote many letters for a nonprofit that was something of a feeder program to our grad program. Thing was, he never cottoned on to the fact that the same committee read all of his letters. He would end the letter with some flowery phrase, like “Sally Weaver has the passion of an artist and the eye of a critic when it comes to her job,” which stands out - but he would use that same phrase for all the applicants. We made a game of it - who would get the “passion of the artist” letter of rec this year?
In spite of his toolishness, several of the students got into our program, because they had other awesome letters.
I feel for the letter writer. Good recommendation letters are darned hard to write if you want to be descriptive and honest. Our company policy is to refuse to give any recommendations at all for fear of liability.
The writing is shaky, but the tenor of the letter is extremely positive, compared to 90% of other recommendation letters I’ve seen.
As someone who does a lot of hiring, I would give that letter more weight than a long, personal, gushing letter, because those letters always trip my “friend” alarm. The letter in the OP, on the other hand, is formletterish, but based in fact.(“During Adam’s tenure he was rated as “Excellent” in all categories of his evaluation. Staff commented that Adam was very dedicated and dependable.”)
