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- Nov 7, 2010
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I apologize in advance for how long this is. Here's the story:
All my applications were turned in last month, and I was reasonably confident about my LOR writers. Of the 3, one in particular I expected to be the strongest since during the past few years I've worked for this professor as both a research assistant and teaching assistant, we've become reasonably close, she's allowed me to take on a huge number of responsibilities (including running her lab and training other research assistants), and she's always been open about how pleased she is with my work quality and dedication.
Here's where my worry comes in: Yesterday when we were working together, she gave me a copy of the letter of recommendation she sent to all my schools last month, and said it would be useful feedback for me to read it. I NEVER would have asked to see it, mind you, but since she freely offered it and insisted I should read it, and all my apps were final at this point anyway, I said ok. Overall it was a glowing letter, praising my work and reiterating much of the positive feedback she'd already given me in the past. HOWEVER, there were a lot of grammatical and language errors. I'd rather not go into detail for anonymity's sake, but these were not minor punctuation errors or something, but pretty glaring. I know that much of it was because English is not her first language (in the past she's had me proofread her proposals and exams to catch these types of things) but the errors themselves don't stick out as being ESL in nature so I don't think readers who didn't know her well would realize this is the cause. I didn't say anything, because it's too late to do anything about it anyway and I didn't actually read it until I got home last night and don't want to seem petty or rude bringing it up to her later.
I'm just grateful she took the time to write such a long and positive letter, errors or not. What I'd love to know is, should I be worried about how this will be looked at by the reviewers of my apps? Any feedback would be appreciated, but I'd especially like to hear from doctoral students who may have heard about this type of thing when apps were being reviewed at their current schools. Thanks for reading!
All my applications were turned in last month, and I was reasonably confident about my LOR writers. Of the 3, one in particular I expected to be the strongest since during the past few years I've worked for this professor as both a research assistant and teaching assistant, we've become reasonably close, she's allowed me to take on a huge number of responsibilities (including running her lab and training other research assistants), and she's always been open about how pleased she is with my work quality and dedication.
Here's where my worry comes in: Yesterday when we were working together, she gave me a copy of the letter of recommendation she sent to all my schools last month, and said it would be useful feedback for me to read it. I NEVER would have asked to see it, mind you, but since she freely offered it and insisted I should read it, and all my apps were final at this point anyway, I said ok. Overall it was a glowing letter, praising my work and reiterating much of the positive feedback she'd already given me in the past. HOWEVER, there were a lot of grammatical and language errors. I'd rather not go into detail for anonymity's sake, but these were not minor punctuation errors or something, but pretty glaring. I know that much of it was because English is not her first language (in the past she's had me proofread her proposals and exams to catch these types of things) but the errors themselves don't stick out as being ESL in nature so I don't think readers who didn't know her well would realize this is the cause. I didn't say anything, because it's too late to do anything about it anyway and I didn't actually read it until I got home last night and don't want to seem petty or rude bringing it up to her later.
I'm just grateful she took the time to write such a long and positive letter, errors or not. What I'd love to know is, should I be worried about how this will be looked at by the reviewers of my apps? Any feedback would be appreciated, but I'd especially like to hear from doctoral students who may have heard about this type of thing when apps were being reviewed at their current schools. Thanks for reading!
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