Giving a SAMPLE Letter of Recommendation OKAY?

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6-8 Weeks

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I'm trying to get one last letter of recommendation, and wanted to give the prof a sample letter so that i can make it really personal to me. One prof actually asked me to do this, and it turned out great. However, I want to suggest this to different prof, should I do it? and if yes, how would I go about doing it politely?

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hi, peedah. since whether the prof uses it depends on whether or not he/she thinks it's a good idea, in communicating with him/her about the letter you might as well mention, "i have a sample letter of recommendation that proved helpful to someone else (or, if he/she knows this person, prof x) as he/she wrote a letter on my behalf. would that be useful for you as well?"

this works because you want him/her to use it and you want him/her to be jazzed about doing so. in asking first if it's useful, you won't need to guess those two things and you won't have to worry you've annoyed the person by offering it without asking. an alternative is to simply give it to the person, but then you run the risk of annoying him/her slightly, which virtually guarantees they'll not use the sample. my exp is that people generally are psyched to have a little help in writing letters, and people generally appreciate being asked what you can do to make this easier for them. i think this recommender may just jump on the chance. good luck!
 
Hey, just in case the professor in question would look down on the idea of someone else's letter as an example, it would help to provide him/her with a copy of your personal statement so the reccomendation would turn out more individualized for you. Hope this helped, Valeriya :p
 
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