E-mail: Request for a recommendation letter for the graduate program

Request for a recommendation letter for the graduate program

Dear Professor xxx,

Thank you for taking time reading this E-mail. I'm xxx, a junior student from xx. Currently I'm actively preparing for the very important summer camp for the graduate program and I'd like to make a humble request for a recommendation letter.

So far, I have taken your VE270 and VE370 courses, in SU2021 and FA2021, respectively, and I received a grade of A- in both courses. At first, I thought learning hardware was boring, but as courses proceeded, learning logic circuits, different components like timer, flip-flop and ALU, finite state machines and CPU and cache mechanism, I found that hardware can be described in diagrams so elegantly and I realized hardware is the foundation for CE/CS fields. I really put great effort in these courses, attending every lecture and most of the recitation classes.

When doing lab work, I enjoyed working with teammates and taking the leadership. The most impressive lab experience was designing a CPU. On weekly meetings, before coding, our team drew diagrams and discussed details in implementation, avoiding unnecessary restructure. I also designed a set of variable naming rules in coding, which reduces ambiguity and naming conflicts when I finally composed each members work. Starting from the minimal CPU skeleton, we then implemented more instructions, and finally added hazard handling, by designing independent modules and wiring them together. I really love such kind of workflow. Also, our team was always the first few groups to demonstrate in lab.

That period of time was tough for me since I was at loss what career should I take in the future, but after I took these courses and obtained good grades, I would say that I was granted great confidence and was inspired to dive into computer engineering. So before the past winter break, I joined a research group, working on heterogenous computing and task scheduling. Now, I'm taking VE373 in and I'm planning to further my study in the field of embedded systems and computer architecture.

Honestly, the summer camp requires at least one recommendation letter from a faculty member whose title is associate professor and above, but I have very limited experience with these faculty members and some of them gently refused my request for recommendation letter because I only took one course with them. I really don't want to miss the summer camp, so I will be sincerely appreciative if you could help!

Thanks & Best Regards
xxx

The professor is going to decline your request yet again. The reason will be that you are seemingly dictating what the content of the letter should be. You are not even asking if he remembers you as a student in these classes as you are not his only A- student. What you should be doing is requesting him to recommend you as a participant based upon his memories of you as a student in every class, if he remembers you at all. This is why you must approach an associate professor who actually remembers your class excellence. He must have some sort of personal relationship with you as your professor. A friendship with him would help. The important part here being that he remembers you without prodding.

The letter should be asking if he remembers your performance in his classes. Then inform him of your need for the letter and why you chose him. Tell him or provide him with a copy of the letter of recommendation writing instructions. Then let him formulate the letter for you based on his insight without any influence from you.

Should he instruct you to write the letter yourself, hire a professional writer to come up with it for you. That way you will avoid indicating information that will inform the reviewer that you are recommending yourself, and just had someone sign the letter for you. It would create a question with regards to the truthfulness and validity of the recommendation letter.