The Philosophers' Cocoon

A safe and supportive forum for philosophers.

Owned & Moderated by Marcus Arvan (University of Tampa)

Contact: marvan@ut.edu

Blog mission & moderation policy

IMPORTANT NOTE on how to ensure anonymity in commenting
Job-Market Reporting Thread (2025-26)
Job-Market Discussion Thread (2025-26)

recent posts

about

How to write better recommendation letters for graduate students and job applicants

This is a series of recommendations by Meghan Sullivan (Notre Dame) on how to write better letters of recommendation for job applicants and applicants for graduate study. I find them all excellent, and am inviting readers to give their own tips and tricks. Note: The norms are obviously somewhat different for tenure and promotion letters.

  1. The letter is primarily an argument, or series of arguments for choosing the candidate for the relevant position. So rules of good argument apply. There should be reasons I think this person should be chosen. Those reasons should be backed up with concrete examples. It should highlight their special strengths. My reasoning for valuing the candidates should be persuasive.
  2. I shouldn’t say something in a letter that I would not feel comfortable saying publicly. These letters get widely distributed within departments, especially if a candidate makes it to the finalist rounds.
  3. I am going to avoid explicit qualitative comparisons between the candidate and other philosophers in their neighborhood. I know this is controversial, but first I don’t find them very helpful (especially if a writer has done their job vis-à-vis point #1). And look, I would never feel comfortable posting a comparison like that publicly. So those kind of comparisons violate #2. I also have some lingering worries that such comparisons are the hiding places for implicit biases I have. 
  4. If you can divide a letter up with subheadings for specific topics you are addressing, that makes it way easier for me to read. Dissertation, further research, teaching skill, contribution to metaphysics…. If it is a long letter, ca. 2 pages (or more), it is nice to see the structure.
  5. For candidates, my advice is super straightforward. I can't write you a letter if you wait too long to show me any of your work. It helps a lot if you are working on something I am seriously invested in, since it is hard to make arguments for fields you do not know well. I need about 1.5-2 months warning to do a job letter well. And I need you to give me drafts of your writing sample, CV, teaching and research statements, etc before I can really get cooking on the letter.
Posted in , ,

2 responses to “How to write better recommendation letters for graduate students and job applicants”

  1. Lady Professor

    I appreciate this advice, and I want to amplify the third point.
    When I was a first-year tenure-track professor I was put on a hiring committee where I encountered a letter of recommendation from a former adviser (FA). FA was recommending Golden Boy, who was a year behind me in graduate school. In the letter, FA compared me, by name and institution, to Golden Boy. Golden Boy was described as being a much better philosopher.
    I was utterly humiliated to encounter my name and this negative comparison to Golden Boy. I was two months into my job, coming right out of graduate school, and had all the insecurities than many new professors experience. It totally shook my confidence, and I remember worrying that my new colleagues would read the letter and conclude that they should have waited a year to make the hire. If FA had written, “Golden Boy is the best student I ever had”, I wouldn’t have responded in this way, but seeing my name and institution in the letter really hurt.
    I can see now that my reaction was over the top. But this basically ended my relationship with FA and poisoned my relationship with my graduate department.
    Now, many years later, I too avoid these kinds of comparisons, partly because of the damage that they can do, but also because I don’t actually find them informative.

    Reply
  2. Axel Gelfert

    Wow, that does sound like a sobering experience, Lady Prof, and no letter-writer should behave like that. I can’t really see the point of explicit comparisons between candidates applying for graduate studies or entry-level assistant professorships. Tenure and promotion cases, as noted in the main post, are a different kettle of fish, since what committees seem to be looking for in such cases is some reassurance that the candidate really is at the same level as his or her higher-ranked colleagues. I suppose there could be an exception for someone who is writing letters for multiple applicants for the same job, but even then it would presumably be better a) to inform candidates that one is already supporting someone else for the job and b) to highlight specific strengths and weaknesses (“candidate A favours approach xyz, whereas B inclines more towards abc”), rather than wholesale generalizations of the sort “A is a better philosopher than B”. Having only been involved in a few hires, what irks me about some letters of reference is precisely this tendency to be far too general. After having done the mental arithmetic of deducting the usual amount of hype (“…the best philosopher of language this millennium has seen thus far…”) this leaves committee members with almost nothing to go on, unless they want to place blind faith in the letter-writers’ judgment and intentions.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Discover more from The Philosophers' Cocoon

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading