Letter of recommendation

[undecisiveone1]

Hello all,

So far I've been going to my professor's office hours but I don't seem to be bonding with him very well. Anyhow, I still will ask him to write me a letter of rec and provide a personal statement as supplement.

I understand we provide optomcas with our professor's email and they will contact the professor and provide information on how to submit the letter of Rec? Or how does it exactly work? If that's the case, how do I even access optomcas since it's not even open until July? I guess my question is how do I provide my professor with the correct information to submit the letter of rec, since I assume it's not as simple as just asking him to write me one and have him save it in his documents until optomcas opens.

I plan to apply beginning of August so that's plenty of time for him to write it over summer. Also, he's the only professor I've ever talked to, so no I can't ask any other professors :3

Also, do any of you guys have tips on bonding with your professor? I plan to ask him in 3 weeks (which is 2 weeks before finals week). Or would it be okay if I ask him during summer? Since I know he'll teach a summer course and I live close to campus anyways

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Capsnduck]

Once optomcas opens, you can just put in your professor's email and it sends a request to him. Yes, he can start writing it at any time and then just upload it once he gets the request. You can set a deadline that you would like to have it in by, so even if you are not planning on applying until August, I would log in to optomcas in early July and make the request with an early to mid August deadline.
As far as bonding with your professor, unfortunately I don't have any good advice. I think that's something that either naturally happens or doesn't. I actually got a letter of recommendation with one of my professors who I felt like personally we did not bond, but academically I was a star student in the two classes that I took with him. I had other professors that I enjoyed talking with outside of class and felt like I had a closer relationship with them, but I chose to have the other professor write the recommendation letters for me (mostly because I took two classes with him and set the curve in both of those classes and also since there were interactive labs he saw me helping other students and not just concerned about my own labs).
The thing is, a stellar letter of recommendation might help sway a school towards you or make you stand out, but I'm not sure its really going to break you if not all of the letters are over-the-top glowing. Just make sure that you have at least one from someone that really knows you and can write well and let the schools know exactly why they'd be missing out not having you in their program.