Recommendation Letters – How Students are Evaluated

At the end of last semester, from about mid-November to mid-December, it seemed to me that I was writing more student recommendation/reference letters than usual — which is fine, of course — but, as I was doing so, it occurred to me (as it does every year) that, although every student is unique, they tend to fall into different categories:

1. Those that are good at everything; 
2. Those that are good at some things, and pretty good at others (e.g., good at composition, okay-but-not-great in theory and history);
3. Those that are pretty good at 1-2 things, but fairly weak in others (e.g., pretty good at composition, but rather weak in theory, aural skills, writing skills, etc.);
4. Those that are really good at one thing (e.g., composition), but really weak at others (e.g., theory, history, aural skills, and writing); and, of course,
5. Those that don't fit into any of the above categories, such as students who are just average or even weak at everything, or almost everything. 

If I am asked to write a letter, the academic areas on which can I comment are the ones that I teach, namely music theory  and composition. But, as you can see in the list below, professors are often asked to rate students in a surprisingly-large number of areas that go far beyond specific academic disciplines, and so I thought it might be useful to list these areas, and, more generally, provide information on the evaluation process for anyone that may wish to request such a letter at any point in their future.

If you are in a Bachelor of Music programme and there is even a remote chance that you might apply to graduate school upon completing your degree, today's post may have some useful information for you. However, if you have no interest in this topic, just ignore it; I promise to get back to composition-related topics in my next post!

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Asking for a reference letter
 • Don’t be shy about asking a professor to write reference letters; it is a part of our job, like correcting/grading, office hours, extra help for students that seek it, committee work, research/composition/performing, and of course, teaching. We do not have to write a reference letter just because you ask for one – sometimes, a professor might decline your request – but most of the time I don't mind writing these letters, as long as you were a good student.

• Be aware, however, that it takes time – for me, typically about 2 hours – to write a thorough reference letter.  

Why does it take so long?
→ Part of that time is spent going through a student’s transcript carefully (which I request from the student), reviewing how the student did in my courses (which involves opening the spreadsheet files for every course taken with me in order to see the student’s results in all parts of the course evaluation scheme), and ranking that student’s final mark in relation to the class (e.g., 3rd out of 34 students), because some graduate schools ask for that information, and if they don’t, I usually provide it anyway.

→ Time is also spent listing all of the positive attributes I can think of for that student, particularly those that I believe would be relevant to studying composition or theory at the graduate level.

→ I also list any weaknesses or concerns I have about the student, because admissions committees want a balanced and honest assessment; if I describe a student in only positive terms, but the transcript reveals that the student has a 75% average over the most recent 1-2 years, then it seems unlikely that an admissions committee would take my letter seriously; a B+ average is nothing to be ashamed of, but it’s not an A average, and, in my opinion, a professor's recommendation letter should expand on the evidence found in a student's transcript without making claims that are unsupported in the transcript.

What Student Attributes are Evaluated?
→ Professors are often asked to rate, and comment on, specific personal attributes or character traits, such as (these are taken directly from various evaluation forms I have seen):

• Ability – All around
• Ability to complete tasks on time (i.e., by a deadline)
• Ability to work under pressure
• Ability to work independently/Willingness to take responsibility for learning
• Academic potential
• Academic preparation/Demonstrated academic ability
• Achievement
• Attendance
• Communication skills – Oral
• Communication skills – Written
• Curiosity – Willingness to explore new approaches, ideas, particularly those that may fall outside the student’s comfort zone
• Focus (does the student stay focused on the task at hand, or are they easily distracted, which can lead to failure to complete tasks, or failure to complete them on time)
• Industriousness – Capacity to work hard
• Initiative
• Intellectual capacity
• Leadership
• Likelihood that my institution would accept the student, if we had a comparable programme (this is a strange category; do some professors write, "we would not accept this student into our graduate programme, but I think they'd be perfect for your institution," which implies that our standards are higher than yours?)
• Likelihood that the student will complete the degree
• Organization - Planning
• Originality/Willingness to “think outside the box”
• Creativity/Talent
• Persistence 
• Problem solving
• Punctuality
• Research ability
• Response to constructive criticism
• Teaching ability (if known) 
• Teamwork (work well in a group)

The rating system varies, but it often consists of a series of clickable boxes assigned to percentile values, such as top 5%, top 10%, top 20%, top 50%, lower than top 50%, and "no basis for judgment." The professor clicks on the appropriate box, in their assessment, for each category.

Universities typically ask for a letter, in addition to asking the professor to rate the student in a number of categories, as above, but no university with which I am familiar asks that the student be assessed in every  category listed above; the above list is compiled from a variety of different universities' lists. Also, some universities have comment boxes in their on-line recommendation forms that allow professors to add a sentence or two explaining our rating in that particular category.

So What?
I have no idea how much weight is placed on this aspect of the evaluation process – I suspect that the above categories matter, but probably not as much as the student’s transcript, composition portfolio, and recommendation letters. At the very least, however, these categories tell us something about what graduate schools value in prospective students.

→ How would you assess your level in each of the above categories? Most people have at least a few weak areas; if you can identify your own, I encourage you to work at them so that they become strengths.

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How to request a letter
When requesting a letter from a professor, give them lots of lead time, and provide all necessary information. More specifically:

• Make your request at least two weeks in advance, because of the time it takes to write these letters. If this is not possible for some reason, then make your request at least one week in advance, but be aware that professors are generally pretty maxed-out in terms of demands on their time, and if you don’t give us enough time, we may not be able to write the letter you request. 
• Make your request in writing, as well as in person (if feasible). The reason for this is that I don’t necessarily remember every request, but if you put it in an E-mail, then I have something to remind me. Confirming this request in person is mostly a social nicety, but it may also give you a sense of the degree to which the professor is willing to write you a positive letter.
• If you are asked to include a composition portfolio, ask your composition teachers for their opinions on what to include, and make as many of the changes/improvements suggested by your instructor as possible. If applying for a theory master's and they require the submission of a theory essay, ask your theory teachers for suggestions and corrections on any essay you plan to submit.
• Provide the professor with an up-to-date transcript, for the reasons cited above. The transcript can be a series of screen shots taken on your computer from your “university self-service” portal, or a PDF of the actual transcript.
• Provide a list of every course you took with the professor, and the semester in which you took that course.
• List any relevant achievements that might strengthen your case, e.g., Senior Rose Bowl Winner, Kiwanis Festival of (what region or city), Gower Band Terra Nova Competition Winner, etc., with the date(s) of the awards. You could include non-musical achievements as well, e.g., cycled from St. John’s, NL, to Victoria, BC, April-August, 2014... If I think they reflect  strengths in your character, I might mention them. And yes, one of our students did this, which I feel said a lot about the type of person they are (tenacious, able to achieve difficult goals, etc.)!
• Indicate in writing every school to which you’d like a letter sent.
• Include the submission deadlines for each school.
• Indicate in writing the specific graduate programmes to which you are applying (e.g., MA in music theory, MMus in composition, etc.).

Electronic Submission?
Most schools allow professors to submit their letters electronically; I much prefer this, so if that’s an option, please choose it. I would guess most professors find E-submissions most convenient, but double check with the professor to see if they prefer to submit the old-fashioned way (i.e., a hard copy via "snail mail").

On the pros and cons of “Gentle Reminders”
To the best of my knowledge, universities automatically send applicants an electronic confirmation message every time they receive a recommendation letter for that student (UPDATE: Maybe it's a glitch in their systems, but they occasionally don't, according to a student who just contacted me… However, I think they are all supposed to do this). If the deadline is near, and you have not received such a notice, here’s what I suggest:

Send the professor a “friendly reminder,” or “gentle nudge” a few days before the submission deadline . For most professors, the workload tends to be heavy and incessant all semester (I take no days off from before the start of a semester to the point when we submit final marks for each course), but particularly so towards the end of a semester. Also, if you have, say, eight students who each want three reference letters, that’s twenty-four references; that's a lot of references, and it is possible to miss some. Not only that, but E-mail is a somewhat inefficient way to communicate, in that every day our inboxes are bombarded with SPAM and “noise” (messages that are not SPAM, but clutter up our in-boxes), so it is easy for the occasional legit E-mail (one that requires a response) to get buried among the debris.

I know that not everyone appreciates reminders, however – When I was an undergraduate student, I saw a professor in the hallway one day and reminded him as politely as I could that the deadline for that letter was that day, only to have the professor blow up at me and proclaim, in an outdoors (not indoors) voice, “Look! If I say I’ll write you a reference letter, I’ll write you that g**d*** letter!”

It occurred to me that I might have destroyed any hope I had of going to graduate school, which I found rather daunting at the time. In today’s world, however, this kind of situation can be mostly avoided, because a thoughtfully-worded gentle reminder via E-mail is unlikely to elicit such a rude response. Speaking only for myself, I don’t mind gentle reminders at all; in fact, I often appreciate them.

Trust the Process; How do you know the professor will write a good letter?
Speaking of daunting, it can feel a bit scary to request a letter and then trust that the professor has written a good letter. But, once your request has been made and the professor has agreed to recommend you, I would suggest trusting the process. A conscientious professor should tell you if they can’t write you a good letter, rather than agree to write a letter, and then write only negative things about you. I suspect that most professors adhere to this ethical code, but you obviously can't assume that every professor does.

I have turned down requests to write recommendation letters on very few occasions — when I do, I always suggest that the students find other professors to write recommendation letters —  for one of three reasons:

(i) The student's request came too close to the submission deadline. This is just a practical matter, not personal — requests often come at the busiest time of a semester, and there are times when I cannot set aside all the other work I have to spend two hours writing a letter that is due the day after I got the request. On the other hand, if I have recently written a letter for you, and you ask me to send it to more universities a day or two before a deadline, this is less problematic. It still can take a little more time than you might expect, particularly when the original letter needs to be modified in any way (such as if the original letter needs to be updated due to new information), but if I can do it, I will. But I'd still prefer 1-2 weeks notice, of course;

(ii) I don’t know the student well enough to say anything really positive about her/him; e.g., they only took one course with me, and it was a few years ago, and the student did not get a very good result in that course. Or perhaps they were an average student but they never came to see me at an office hour, and they never said much in class, so I don't feel like I know the student very well;

(iii) I know the student pretty well, but what I know about them is not positive… Perhaps they took several courses with me, but did not do very well in any of them, or they were rude/disrespectful on multiple occasions, or they skipped classes and/or were late on multiple occasions, or they did not complete  assignments or quizzes on multiple occasions, or they committed academic dishonesty (the most common example of this is students collaborating with each other on assignments), or they generally disregarded my compositional advice and suggestions, etc. If a student has shown little indication that they are willing to be taught, why would anyone else want to teach them?

To be clear, I’m not talking about an occasional disagreement; these are not unusual in teaching, and I don't mind them as long as the discussion is respectful. I’m referring more to an on-going and troublesome pattern of behaviour, which is extraordinarily rare; I think I have encountered only about three such cases in thirty years of teaching.

The only time I recall declining a recommendation letter request for reason (iii) above involved a student who was extraordinarily sullen and rude. Don't get me wrong — I have encountered occasional instances of rudeness over the years, but this particular student really stood out from the rest (and not in a good way!), so much so that other students complained to me in private about the student’s behaviour. I was therefore surprised when the student asked me for a recommendation — did they think they were somehow accumulating karmic good-will credits while engaging in blatantly-disrespectful behaviour? — and so I suggested that the student would be better off asking someone else for a recommendation.

I don't hold grudges, or try to undermine students in any way. Had I decided to write a letter for this person, I would have found positive things to say about her/him (no matter who you are, I can usually find positive things to say about you, and this student was definitely smart and talented), but I would have also had to mention the problematic behaviours that I felt would sabotage their chances of succeeding in a graduate programme, which is why I suggested they ask someone else.

Not sure about applying?
If you want to go to graduate school but are thinking that perhaps you ought not to apply because your marks aren't great, or your composition portfolio is not strong enough, I would suggest applying anyway, because you never know what the outcome will be. Sometimes, average students (IMO) have been accepted into master's programmes, while stronger students have been rejected. You don't know the circumstance or criteria used in the evaluation of your application; in some years, and in some universities, you might be in competition with sixty other students for six spots, while in other years or different universities you might only be in competition with eight other students for six available spots. I was at a graduate admissions committee recently in which we rejected a couple of the applicants because they had 72-75 averages and below-average audition scores. We then learned that they had both been accepted at a larger (and better known, frankly) university, presumably because this university had admission quotas to fill, and these applicants met their minimum admission standards.

If graduate schools reject you, and you are not willing to give up on your dream, find a way to turn this into a positive experience: Identify your weaknesses, work hard on improving in those areas, and then apply again. For composition, this might entail writing more pieces, perhaps longer and more substantial, perhaps for larger ensembles, or written more idiomatically for the instruments involved, or exploring new techniques, or providing more score detail, or better recordings, or just writing better pieces; most of us acknowledge that our early compositions are not as good as later compositions. If you want to do a Master's in composition but you had some weak results in music theory classes, explore the possibility of taking some of them again, this time working harder or more consistently than you did previously, in order to gain a better understanding of the material, and demonstrate that you are capable of getting good marks in theory.

List of Positive Attributes
It is easiest students to write strongly-suportive recommendations for students with the following qualities:

1. At or near the top of every composition course they took with me;
2. Developing into very good composers — this is slightly different than #1, because a student's course grade can be near the top of the composition class by getting full marks in all the extra-compositional assessment areas — excellent preparation, excellent contributions to class discussions,  making the required number of thoughtful composition blog comments — while producing compositions that are pretty good (B+, A-), but not extremely good (A, A+);
3. At or near the top of every theory course they took with me;
4. Actively curious about new music; they seek out new scores to study and new music to hear, and are excited by new discoveries;
5. Respond well to compositional suggestions, which means they are willing to try new things without pre-judging them, and to embrace at least some of them;
6. Do all their work on time with a minimum of excuses for gaps in productivity;
7. Do more work than most other students;
8. Are ambitious – I ask for a short character piece, and they write three; or, they write a piece for orchestra with zero training in orchestration; or, I ask for a string quartet of at least 4-5 minutes, and they write a 15-minute string quartet;
9. Have a great attitude; and
10. Participate regularly in class, and, in particular, they are skilled in giving constructive criticism to fellow students in our composition seminars.

If I were assigning a score of 1 (= terrible!) to 10 (= whatever is better than excellent!) to each of the above qualities, I feel confident in saying that I have never had a student who I would have rated as a 10 in every category.

However, I have had occasional composition students who are strong in all of these areas, meaning I would perhaps rate them as an 8 or higher in every category. Such students tend to be accepted into graduate programmes, provided they didn't only apply to the most selective universities, like Indiana or Yale (but some of our students have gone to Indiana University and Yale, for example, so why not you?).

What do you do if you are pretty good at composition, but pretty weak in, say, theory?
 Most students are strong in some of the areas, but not all, and in many cases such students have been accepted into graduate programmes. Some students are very good at composition, but very weak in music theory; this can be a deal-breaker for some universities, since a graduate programme in composition usually requires music theory courses as well. I still suggest that such students apply to graduate schools (because you never know what might transpire), and, if not accepted, then consider doing extra work in music theory (like re-taking music theory courses to try to obtain better results), and then applying again in the following year. Realistically, however, this does not give students much of an opportunity to improve their standing in theory courses, since applications are often due by the end of the fall semester, which would give a graduating student only one semester in which to demonstrate an improvement. But, if you didn't get in to any Master's programmes and you are average to weak in music theory (at least according to the marks you got), then it's worth a shot.

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If you are reading this in the early years of your academic studies, the clear conclusion to draw is to become as strong as possible in every possible area. It starts with taking every course seriously, and not falling into the trap of making excuses for poor results in, say, theory courses, such as, "this is nothing but a set of rules for OLD music; I want to make NEW music, and break any rules I wish!"

This, strange as it sounds, accurately describes my mindset in my early years of music study. When I started taking music theory, I didn't see the point of it, and thought it had nothing to do with the music I wanted to write. Consequently, I failed grades 3 and 5 harmony at the Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM), and didn't do very well in grade 4 harmony either. After about two years of poor results at the RCM, I started studying privately with an excellent composition teacher, Dr. Sam Dolin, who made me re-do music theory all over again, from the beginning, and, while I resented it a bit at first, he made it interesting, fascinating, and relevant for me, and my love for music theory – which is, basically, learning how music works – began at that point, and has never abated. And yes, I got better at it.

You can get off to a bad start in something, and end up becoming very good at that thing; in my case I just needed a combination of a good teacher and an attitude readjustment.

What not to do!
Do not ask a professor to write you a recommendation letter, and then change your mind and, basically, fire them because you have suddenly become worried that they might say something negative or even lukewarm about you. If you ask a professor to write you a letter, and if they say yes, then just continue to work hard and be productive and respectful, and trust that the professor will advocate your behalf. I realize that not knowing exactly what a professor will write about you can trigger insecurities, but, again, you have to trust that, if a professor agrees to write a letter on your behalf, they believe in you have your best interests at heart.

This actually happened to me once. A student I knew very well because I had taught them in numerous courses, asked me to write various recommendation letters for them, so I did, and as I always do, I wrote very positively about the areas in which the student was strong. This student belonged to category 3 or 4, from the listed categories at the top of this post, meaning they were good in one area – very good, in my opinion – but average or even weak in some others. The student was not accepted anywhere.

Although I was disappointed on the student's behalf, the rejections did not come as a big surprise to me – for the most part, you have to be good or very good in many areas (including composition and theory) in order to be accepted to a graduate programme in composition (although I know of a few students who were accepted to graduate schools when they were strong at composition, and only slightly above average at theory) – because I know that, no matter how positive a letter I write on your behalf, the transcript, which admissions committees always see and weigh heavily, does not lie; if you did poorly in cognate areas like music theory and aural skills, graduate committees are likely to be concerned about it.

The student decided to retake some theory courses and reapply a year later, and this impressed me tremendously. It further supported my opinion that this was someone who deserved to be recommended for graduate studies.

The flaw in this plan was in its execution, however; the student did not do particularly well in the courses taken for the second time. In at least one course they got a lower mark. I mentioned to the student that s/he might not have improved their theory marks sufficiently to impress graduate committees favourably, which, from my point of view was just a reality check – if you take a course and get 68% the first time, and then retake it and get 72%, it seems likely that an admissions committee will be convinced that you have made significant improvements in that area.

It was not intended as a signal that I would now be writing a lukewarm letter on their behalf, but I gather that is how it was interpreted, and I received a formal note from the student that evening informing me that I had been removed from the student's reference list.

Ouch!

The most unfortunate part of all of this is that the student then asked a colleague of mine to write a letter for them, and the colleague (a) had not taught the student in many courses and thus did not know them very well, and (b) taught a course that the student re-took but did not do particularly well in the second time, and so there was no way that this other professor was able to write a strong letter. for the student In fact, I am pretty sure that the letters I had written on the student's behalf were the most supportive and positive of any of the letters written by other professors, simply because (a) I knew the student very well, (b) I strongly supported their candidacy for graduate studies, and (c) I knew that the student was not held in high regard by some of my colleagues.

Unfortunately, the student was not admitted to any graduate programmes after re-taking the theory courses. And, despite what happened, I wish for a bright future for the student, who I continue to believe is a good composer.

So the moral of this excessively-long blog post is: Work hard in every course, even ones you may think are useless or stupid, and demonstrate that you are a good student. Perhaps you will never need reference letters from your professors, but you might; you don't know if your ambitions will change in the future. If you do , pick professors who know you well, and who have been supportive of you, and trust that they will advocate on your behalf.