Personal recommendations are an important request and require special attention to make them suitable. If you’ve been asked to write a personal letter of recommendation for a friend, you may have ...

Confirm you’re comfortable writing it. Politely declining is perfectly OK if you don’t feel you can write a strong or meaningful recommendation. It’s better to be honest than to provide a lukewarm ...

A character reference letter can make or break an applicant’s chances. Here’s how to write a great one. A character reference letter can make or break an applicant’s chances Before the days of ...

Here is a common scene: A supervisor agrees to write your letter of recommendation with one condition—you draft it. Shocker. We, too, were surprised the first time this happened to us. We assumed ...

When a colleague or peer asks you to write them a reference letter, it can feel like both an honor and a challenge. You want to help them succeed, but crafting a strong reference letter requires more ...

Letters of reference or recommendation are common devices in the corporate world. Many people request letters of reference from current or former employers, and employers may be more than happy to ...

Undergraduates need them for graduate-school applications; PhD students and postdocs use them to apply for fellowships and jobs; senior scientists often have to have them to apply for awards and ...

It is an honor to be asked to be someone’s character reference. But even if you are enthused about helping a friend or colleague out, you might feel a little intimidated by the prospect of putting the ...

These letters, which help students land everything from valuable scholarships to coveted internships, need to seem authentic and personalized, but that takes time, which is already in short supply for ...

Shortly after becoming a full professor, I asked a colleague who had held that rank for years to name the greatest challenge she had faced in this ultimate chapter of faculty life. Her instant reply: ...

It is around this time of year, when letter-writing season is in full swing, that many professors receive numerous requests for recommendations from students and colleagues applying for graduate ...