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McMaster University

Faculty of Humanities

Asking Dr. Anderson for a reference letter

Please note that I write letters of reference only for students who are majoring in Honours Linguistics or Honours Cognitive Science of Language, and for graduate students in the GSJ and CogSciL programs.

Starting in Second Year

Cultivate a relationship with the professors in your major field. Participate actively in class, and go to the professor’s office hours to introduce yourself and ask questions. If you have a choice, choose smaller classes so that your professors have more opportunity to get to know you. Save all your marked work, especially term papers.

Attend talks and departmental events. Look for opportunities to help with professors’ research by working or volunteering in the lab. Many Linguistics faculty at Mac run research programs that include student volunteers through the ARiEAL research center.

In your Final Year

Identify your referees. Not everyone you ask will be able to write you a letter, but start by asking the professors who know you and your work best. If you are applying for a specialized field, then ideally these will be the professors in your particular programme.

Ask early! Most graduate programmes have application deadlines in December or early January, both of which are very busy times for professors. This means that the latest you should make your request is early October, so your referee has time to write you a good letter.

Be polite. It is always good to be considerate and polite in your dealings with your professors. But there is no need to be apologetic — writing reference letters is part of a professor’s job. It is generally a good idea to come to the professor’s regularly scheduled office hours with your application materials in hand. This gives the professor a chance to ask you questions about your application, or set another meeting time with you if they want.

Be prepared. Even if your professor thinks you walk on water, they can write a better letter if they have concrete things to say about you. Make it easy for them to say good things by providing them with:

  1. a list of what classes you took with the professor, and in what year. An official transcript is not necessary.

  2. copies of your graded work from that professor’s courses, especially term papers

  3. a copy of your resume

  4. a draft of the Statement of Interest that you intend to include with your application

  5. a list of all the programs you’re applying to with the due dates for each one.

Show appreciation. Once you have received your offers from the places you’ve applied, let your referees know and thank them for their support — they will be glad for your success! If you anticipate that you might need letters in future years, send your referees updates from time to time about your progress.

Writing your Statement of Interest

Many programs ask you to include a Statement of Interest with your application. The goal of these statements is to demonstrate (a) the training and skills that you bring to the program or profession, and (b) your understanding of what you will learn in the program. If you’re applying to a research program (as opposed to a clinical program), you also want to provide some idea of the topic you want to research, so that the admissions committee can assess whether there is someone in the department with the relevant expertise to supervise you.

While personal anecdotes and accounts of your lived experience might play a role in your statement, what admissions committees are really trying to assess is whether you’re likely to succeed in their program. Your passions, wishes, and childhood wishes play much less of a role in this decision than your education, experience, and skills!