A lot is at stake for students applying for national scholarships, which is why each recommendation letter for a scholarship candidate must be exceptionally strong, be written from an informed perspective, and exude a sincere tone. Simply put, to become a contender, a candidate needs every letter of reference to be excellent. It may be tempting to think that the academic records of top-shelf students speak for themselves and that their letters make little difference, but given the level of competition, exceptional students with ordinary letters of reference look unexceptional. As you review the sample letters in this chapter, note how often the writers invite us to imagine ourselves in the presence of the student—the narratives aim to help us know the candidate well, to in fact admire the student. The writers of these letters made it a point to sing their students' praises, both proudly and professionally.
At the same time, you’ll find cautions here about the need for a credible letter not given to hyperbole. In particular, evaluators from outside the US have long been clamoring for honest evaluations that aid selectors in the winnowing process, even asking writers specifically to comment on a student’s weaknesses as testimony that the writer is indeed painting a complete picture. Thorough discussions of how to go about this are in Chapter 1, with specific calls for criticism in this chapter from the Marshall, Rhodes, and Gates Cambridge scholarships.
The samples in this chapter come from my review of hundreds of recommendation letters for nine national scholarships, with the letters selected reflecting skill and variety. The brief summary included here about each scholarship will help you to write a letter of maximum efficacy. Also, if you wish to learn more about the scholarship the student is applying for, you can go to the website provided for each scholarship as well as turn to the student’s application materials.
A number of schools have published excellent advice on the web about writing recommendation letters for scholarship candidates. Here is one such site:
The Udall Scholarship honors Morris K. Udall, an Arizona Congressman known for authoring legislation to protect wilderness areas and for his commitment to the Native American population. Sophomores and juniors are eligible for the scholarship money, which covers educational expenses for one year up to a maximum of $5,000.
Candidates for the Udall scholarship supply three letters of reference and prepare extensive application materials, including biographical background, personal narrative, educational plans, and an essay of 800 words applying Congressman Udall’s achievements to their own background. Ideally, references for the student should be highly familiar with the student’s application, particularly the essay question responses.
The criteria you should address in a Udall Scholarship recommendation letter include:
The best Udall Scholarship letters provide concrete evidence of the student’s abilities and demonstrate a strong personal relationship between the student and the letter writer. The strongest letters emphasize the student’s dedication to his or her field of study and stress the student’s communication skills. In addition, the letter writer’s ability to comment briefly on the student’s 800-word essay or on the student’s potential for making contributions to the field of environmental public policy can have a significant impact on the student’s chances of winning a scholarship. In the second sample Udall letter provided, note how the writer addresses these issues with sentences such as the following: “As I’m sure you will note in her application materials, Janet is—especially for her age—a true stylist, and she will bring her respect and ability for both written and verbal expression to all of her work. She has spoken with me of a goal to become a scientist writer, and I am convinced of her ability to do so.”
When writing a Udall recommendation, beware of shortchanging the student by providing too little detail or by focusing too much on the nature of the scholarship itself. Perhaps because of the scholarship’s link to Udall and the Congressman’s indubitable impact on the nation’s environmental policy, some letter writers in the past have spent considerable time discussing Udall and his work. But such a practice can become digressive, especially because it is the student’s job to evaluate Udall’s accomplishments in the application materials. Any discussion of Udall himself or the scholarship’s goals should be done with efficiency, as in the final paragraph of the first sample letter in the pdf link below, where the writer fluidly comments, “I cannot imagine a better student to meet your goals of ‘educating a new generation of Americans to preserve and protect their national heritage.’”
In 2002, a former Udall selection committee member noted that backgrounds of committee members vary widely: “ . . . from professors of environmental policy and science, EPA officials, directors of scholarships and Honors programs, to representatives of Native American interests” (1). She also noted that evaluators had just 10 or 15 minutes to consider each application package, including the time needed to read the three letters of reference, and that the selection committee read about 450 applications in two and a half days. In a more recent blog from 2009, that same committee member notes that the number of Udall candidates has now grown to over 500 (2). Candidates who stand above the crowd are those who show a commitment to activities, volunteerism, and leadership.
Given these evaluative constraints, letter writers should favor brevity (note how each sample letter in the pdf link below is just one page) and not shy away from offering personal perspective about the student’s activities and character.
There are some special award categories for the Udall Scholarship. Specifically, The Udall Scholarship Foundation Board of Trustees awards scholarships to Native American and Alaska Native students who intend to pursue careers in health care or tribal public policy. In these circumstances, the candidate and the three references must tailor their materials accordingly, giving special attention to the student’s background in ethics, public policy, or community service.
To help you prepare your letter, you can visit the Udall Scholarship website as well as my sister webpage for students applying for the Udall:
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awards fellowships for graduate study in science, mathematics, and engineering. The fellowships can support students for one year or more, and the stipend is generous (in 2009 each fellow received $30,000 for a 12-month tenure), with an additional cost-of-education allowance granted to the fellowship institution ($10,500 in 2009). Therefore, these awards are highly competitive, and the selection panels—made up of professors, scientists, mathematicians, and engineers—are most interested in students who will have a great impact on their fields and bring further reputation to their institutions. The NSF program also allows for a one-time international research travel grant if the student seeks to do research in a foreign country for at least three continuous months. Letters of reference for NSF Fellowships should be written with the above facts in mind.
The Fastlane website, which NSF candidates and their recommenders must use to process the application, details the criteria that recommenders should address in their letters (3), as follows:
Intellectual Merit: The intellectual merit criterion includes demonstrated intellectual ability and other accepted requisites for scholarly scientific study, such as the ability to: (1) plan and conduct research; (2) work as a member of a team as well as independently; and (3) interpret and communicate research findings. Panelists are instructed to consider: the strength of the academic record, the proposed plan of research, the description of previous research experience, the appropriateness of the choice of references and the extent to which they indicate merit, Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) General and Subject Tests scores, and the appropriateness of the choice of institution for fellowship tenure relative to the proposed plan of research.
Broader Impacts: The broader impacts criterion includes contributions that (1) effectively integrate research and education at all levels, infuse learning with the excitement of discovery, and assure that the findings and methods of research are communicated in a broad context and to a large audience; (2) encourage diversity, broaden opportunities, and enable the participation of all citizens—women and men, underrepresented minorities, and persons with disabilities—in science and research; (3) enhance scientific and technical understanding; and (4) benefit society. Applicants may provide characteristics of their background, including personal, professional, and educational experiences, to indicate their potential to fulfill the broader impacts criterion.
The best NSF recommendation letters include thorough detail about the student as a scientist, mathematician, or engineer, with special attention to the student’s ability to make significant contributions to research that will have broader impacts in the field. Effective letters discuss such quantitative measures as a student’s grades, GPA, GRE scores, and class ranking, but also give special attention to such qualities as a student’s willingness to represent the college at functions, attendance and presentations at meetings or conferences, work as a teaching assistant or lab assistant, quality of the student’s publications, if any, and temperament and vision as a researcher.
Common problems in NSF recommendation letters are a failure to demonstrate the student’s potential in a manner specific to a discipline, and a lack of context or commentary by the letter writer about the student’s research goals. You should not hesitate to obtain more detail from the student if it helps you write a more thorough letter, and you should also feel free to create the proper context by discussing the type of research or teaching that the student has done or will be doing. Students prepare extensive essays as part of their application, including a plan for graduate research, and it is critical that recommenders read and comment on these documents.
Note how the first sample NSF letter in the pdf link below provides abundant detail about the student’s research project so that the selection committee can judge the worth of the student’s work as a researcher and assess the student’s ability to work as part of a team. Some readers might even say that the letter provides excessive detail about the science, but the writer prepares us for the lengthy science discussion with the sentence, “To emphasize the scope and importance of Janet’s work, a summary of the relevant science follows.” The second sample letter focuses more on the student’s temperament as a researcher, using superlatives including “well-organized,” “quick,” “confident,” “cheerful,” and “helping.” These superlatives are effective because they define exactly the qualities the student possesses without overstating them.
In awarding fellowships, the goal of the National Science Foundation is to “ensure the vitality of the human resource base of science, technology, mathematics, and engineering in the United States and to reinforce its diversity” (4). Although awards are first made on the basis of merit, other considerations such as gender are also used as secondary criteria. Thus, some recommenders see the letter as an opportunity to comment briefly about whether or not women are underrepresented in the student’s chosen field (the second sample letter in the pdf linked below provides such a comment in its closing paragraph). Whether such commentary is offered or not, some awards are reserved each year for the categories of Women in Engineering (WENGS) and Women in Computer and Information Science (WICS).
To help you prepare your letter, you can browse relevant pages on the fastlane.nsf.gov website as well as my sister webpage for students applying for the NSF: