Teacher Rec's

[DougieG]

I'm a jr at SDSU and today in my history (my major) seminar class thingy we had a lady come in from the history honors society and yada yada yada she mentioned teacher rec's. The recommendations for this honor society is no big deal, just a few sentences saying you're a good student and whatever emailed to the advisor or whatever the faculty member in charge of the honor society is.

But this got me thinking, as I have been reading about different grad schools' requirements for history programs, or just grad school programs in general, and most (all?) require teacher recommendations. Since SDSU is a big school and history is a very easy major with tons of classes to choose from I have virtually no personal relationships with any of my profs except for the one in this seminar class (15 of us in it so naturally I have some repoir...repoire...re-poor phonetically). What are the teacher rec's like for grad school? I remember the ones I needed coming out of high school were pretty serious and depended very much on my relationships with the teachers. Is it like this? Do I need to start going to office hours just for the purpose of developing a relationship to use as a teacher rec?

FWIW I think it wouldn't be an issue getting into SDSU's grad program for history but as I have started to actually see the value in my education (unlike in high school) I have done better and am looking into schools of a higher caliber for graduate programs, schools where I assume teacher recommendations may matter.

Sorry this is so wordy. Hopefully it'll get the attention of Ganjasaurus Rex and any other profs out there as well, most notably on how they would react to a student coming to their office hours for this sole purpose? I feel quite uncomfortable about the idea of forcing a relationship with a prof or two just to garnish a rec at the end of it, but is this what I have to do?

[Ganjasaurus Rex]

I take it that you're talking about Letters of Recommendation for grad school?

It is very unlikely that a prof will write a letter for you, or at least a decent one, if you have not been in her/his class multiple times and/or worked with her/him on a project together.

There is nothing wrong with going to a prof that you like and asking to work with him with the goal of getting a letter of recommendation down the road if your work is excellent. I have students ask me this all the time and usually say yes if their GPA is high enough to get into grad school to begin with. I have 14 undergrads in my lab this semester, and most of them are there for letters.

Some profs will make you work hard for the letters and some will not. I personally let my undergrads do pretty whatever they like as long as it involves research in my field.

Talk to your profs and see how they feel.

[Ganjasaurus Rex]

Let me add another important note.

If you are asking for a letter from someone, and they agree, make sure you give them all the relevant info they need to write the letter. Give them your transcripts, work history, research experience, etc. Also provide a self-addressed stamped envelope (sase) so they don't have to do that themselves after they write the letter. I usually tell students to write their own letter and i'll sign it if i agree with it (i'm too busy to write them all myself).

After you give them the info and sase, send them a reminder email a few weeks before the letter is due. Then send a thank you note after they have sent it in. They're doing you a big favor, so make sure they know you appreciate it. You don't have to suck up or anything... just be courtesy.

[Wyman]

Quick point:

If you haven't done anything substantial with a professor, you probably don't want their letter anyway. Everyone's letters say "So and so was a good student". You want yours to stand out. Many of my grad schools had forms that asked my profs to fill in "This student was in the top _____ % of students in the last 10 years" or something as well. You really want that relationship to be solid, and you want the professor to be able to write something interesting about you and his experience with you.

Fortunately, not all of your grad school letters have to come from profs. Unfortunately, you'll probably want at least 2 that do.

[Pokerdemic]

Well you are a junior so you have some time. Start going to office hours and ask extra questions about the material, or the research the professor does. Look into the option of writing a senior thesis so you can develop a sustained relationship with a professor.

FWIW, be sure you research programs other than SDSU. This is because graduate programs don't like academic inbreeding, and they make it tough for their own undergrads to proceed into their graduate programs.

Finally, in the humanities, letters of recommendation are suffering from inflation, much like trends in grade inflation. In other words, because everyone gets glowing letters of recommendation, they don't counts as much as, say, GRE scores.

One of my former professors has studied grad school admissions in the humanities extensively, and he is convinced GREs matter far, far more than something like letters of recommendation. So get to studying. I spent three months studying for mine and ended up with a perfect score on the verbal section (thinly veiled brag). This got me funding at 60% of the schools I applied to, which is crucial if you want to go to grad school in the humanities and not rack up mad debt.

[DougieG]

Yes I'm referring to letters of recommendation. Sorry if that was confusing.

Thanks for the responses, unfortunately it seems I'll have to pick a prof and start cultivating a relationship. However I am somewhat glad to hear that GRE scores matter more than letters of recommendation as that means I don't need to have any professor writing a riveting tale of my abilities to balance work and school and blah blah as long as I do well on the tests.