Letters of recommendation

Sooner or later, you're going to need a letter of recommendation from professors/employers who know you and are able to write positive things about you. These kinds of letters are necessary for scholarship/grant applications, applications to graduate school, etc. I often get requests at the last minute, with minimal information about the program for which I'm writing the letter, and without copies of any of the other information the student will submit alongside my letter. I suspect the main reason for the lack of information is procrastination...waiting too long to get around to putting the application together.

If the professor agrees to write the letter, all of this means that they won't have enough information about you to write a thoughtful letter that points to your strengths nor time to think about what they might write. The result? A generic letter of recommendation: "John X. took my Petrology class in Spring 2008 and received a final grade of B+, scoring in the top third of students in that class...He is a hard-worker, turned in all assignments, and asks lots of questions in class....I recommend him for XYZ scholarship." Trust me - that's not the kind of letter you want.

It's best if professors are able to talk about improvement of your grades over time and point to the 3.6 GPA in your geology courses (versus the 3.3 overall GPA) - information contained in your transcript. A resume that includes previous relevant work or research experience, published abstracts, scholarships awarded, community service experience, teaching experience, etc. would provide additional details that might significantly improve a letter of recommendation. Finally, having final (or semi-final) copies of the essay(s), budget, and/or statement of purpose can make all the difference; those documents discuss your qualifications for the grant or what you plan do as part of your graduate research, your motivation for pursuing graduate school, whether they feel you're a good fit for the program/advisor to which you're applying....key elements to a letter of recommendation. If you've chosen faculty who know you well academically, they can discuss whether you're a capable researcher and prepared for graduate school, include details of the kind of research you did, discuss how involved intellectually you were with the project, etc. It is also very important to give your letter-writers copies of any details of the grant/scholarship that you're applying for: who is the funder? what sorts of research do they support? what are the eligibility requirements? do they have a preference to support a particular group (women, minorities, petroleum geologists)? what is the typical grant size? For example, here is some of the text describing GSA's Graduate Student Research Grant program:

"The primary role of the GSA research grants program is to provide partial support of master's and doctoral thesis research in the geological sciences for graduate students enrolled in universities in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Central America. In 2008, 53% of the applicants received funding. GSA strongly encourages women, minorities, and persons with disabilities to participate fully in this grants program."

From this, I can see that they want to partially fund thesis research. That's an important thing to know from the letter-writer's (and the applicant's) standpoint: in a letter, I can emphasize other funding that's available to support a student's research or point to other aspects of the thesis project for which no funding from GSA is requested.

Here is another example from AAPG's Grants-in-Aid program describing how AAPG will choose grant awardees: "Factors weighed in selecting successful applicants include: the qualifications of an applicant as indicated by past performance; originality and imagination of the proposed project; support of the department in which the work is being done; and perceived significance of the project to petroleum, energy minerals and related environmental geology."

Grant proposals often have word/character/page limits that mean you can't necessarily say everything you want in your proposal. Armed with the above information from AAPG's web site, a letter-writer can again better justify funding your proposal by highlighting those specific points about you or your project.

Giving your letter writers all that information with plenty of time (at least 2 weeks before the deadline) gives us good fodder for the letter and puts us in a good frame of mind while we're writing those letters. There is perhaps less need to ask for a letter so formally (see the link above) after the first request, and particularly from your main advisor who has written (multiple) letters for you in the past, but the need for copies of the meat of your application (the essays and budget, the statement of purpose, and program requirements) still stands. Always.

Final tip: academics tend to write more glowing letters than employers/supervisors outside academia (think: the geotechnical firm you worked for right after college) because we know what the competition is like and what stands out (the good and bad) when evaluating a grad school or grant application.

Scientific writing

As a research group, you are in different stages of your academic careers that require writing specific kinds of documents. I've found a few sets of (mostly) succinct guidelines to help both graduate students and undergraduates: a statement of purpose for admission to graduate school, a thesis proposal, a grant application, and theses. You should also know how to write an abstract.

Scientific writing also requires you to write briefly and to the point. Use an active, not passive, voice. Cite references appropriately and be consistent in how you format the text. I have several books on scientific writing style in my office including the classic Strunk and White. Strunk and White also address words and expressions that are commonly misused (e.g., affect vs. effect; and you can always search Google if you're not sure...).

It is very important to first get the words on paper (or the computer screen), without worrying if it's crap. Then sleep on it. Return to the text with a fresh perspective, improve what you wrote, and move on to write the next section.

Next, read through the text again and assess whether it is organized correctly and try to make the text more succinct: Look for redundancy and remove it, perhaps by combining sentences or deleting sentences outright. Avoid short, choppy sentences in favor of more complex sentences that combine ideas/phrases. Are the sections of the paper or individual paragraphs in the right place in the paper? Move introductory or background information to the front of the paper. Make sure your data/results are separate from your interpretations.

Have you answered the question every reader will ask - why is this work important? Have you related your results to the bigger picture?

You're not done yet. When you have a first draft, proofread it and run spell- and grammar-checkers. Then run it past a set of fresh eyes: both you and your fellow students will benefit by reading each others' work.

Add page numbers, put your name somewhere in the file name of your document (so that I don't have 15 "thesis.doc" files on my computer), then it's ready to send to me.