Letters of Recommendation

Recommendation letters can only hurt your chances of admission.

Recommendation letters are an odd invention of job and academic selection. Everyone has positive letters for the simple reason that applicants control who writes them. Applicants invariably find people who write positive letters. In addition, people who are asked to write letters will decline to do so if they intend to write something negative. The result is that virtually all the letters of recommendation are beaming endorsements of the applicant. In a situation like this, it is clear that letters of recommendation cannot really help you get into a program; when it comes to making a decision, they do not allow the people making choices to discriminate among the applicants. Since every applicant's recommendations are the same, they function as a constant in the selection equation.

A recommendation letter will hurt your chances of admission if you recruit someone who writes something that is less than completely complimentary. Negative letters usually have a devastating impact, far more severe than other types of negative information. For this reason, you should request to see any letters written on your behalf. Follow these points when acquiring recommendation letters:

• Letters should be requested from academic or work sources. The best letters are those written by faculty members. Next in order are letters written by psychologists who supervised you in mental health jobs. Finally, you may have letters written by other academics, such as the dean of your college. Letters from friends of the family who are psychologists, psychiatrists or physicians almost always work against you, even if they are positive. Such letters suggest that you do not have sufficient research and clinical experience. You should have enough experience in these areas that you can find three psychologists to write positive recommendations.

• Prepare a Vita to submit to these recommenders when you ask them to write your letter. Although they may know you and like you, they probably do not know that much about you, especially in areas they have not observed. The Vita will help in making the letters sound professional and informed.

• Give your recommenders all the other materials they will need to prepare your letters. Since they will send letters to each of the fifteen or so sites you will make an application, they need envelopes addressed to each site, typed by you. They need a plain text computer file of all the addresses so that they can use a word processing mail merge program to create all the letters. The file must be in plain text because the recommenders may not use the same word processor or computer that you use. If you do not know about the function of mail merge in your word processor, then study it. Do everything you can to anticipate what your recommenders must do in order to get all the letters written and mailed to your application sites. Give them all the materials and information they will need. Do not expect that the recommender will have secretarial support for your letters. Offer to mail merge and print the letters if this is practical. By doing all these things, you keep in control of the application process and are better able to get the letters submitted by the program deadlines.

• Give you recommenders plenty of time to write and submit the letters. Request letters of recommendation at least two months before your first deadline. It is appropriate to remind recommenders of your deadlines.