Professional LORs (The Untold Story)
Hello everyone, as we all know an LOR plays a vital role while applying to different universities. In this article, I have tried my best to explain everything from scratch about professional LORs (Letters of Recommendation)
I followed these guidelines while drafting my Professional LORs and received 15 admits from different universities in the US, Canada and UK.
If you are someone with 1 year or above of work experience (full-time) then providing only academic LORs will not be a great idea and might negatively impact your application. . (PS: You do not want the admission committee to think that you do not have good relations at your workplace or that you could not convince any person from your workplace to be your referee).
2 Academic and 1 Professional LOR is the best combination of LORs to increase your chances of getting an admit substantially.
You can check out this post to know more about academic LORs -
https://yocket.com/feed/tips-and-guidelines-for-academic-lor-letter-of-recommendation-752811
Here are a few tips to keep in mind while drafting or selecting a Referee in order to get a Professional LOR:
1. An LOR (professional one) must be written on the Official Letterhead of the Company/Firm.
2. The Date mentioned on the LOR should not be older than 3 months.
3. It should have the Referee’s signature on it (hand written preferably).
4. It should also have the Referee’s official (company’s) email address (don't mention personal email ID such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail etc. ), contact number along with the ISD code and official addresses are preferred rather than personal ones.
5. Don't approach Referees only because of their higher designation like CEO, CTO, and so on under whom you may have never worked actually. However, the referee should be someone under whom you have been working. In a nutshell the recommender should be in a position so that his/her endorsement towards you for a Master's degree is understandable by the admission committee.
6. Try to contact those referees under whom you performed out of the box and on projects that highlight your niche technical skills so that a coherency can be observed by the admission committee between your LOR, SOP, and CV.
7. Detailed information about your projects, clients, niche skills, soft skills, hard skills should be included in your LOR in a simple and lucid language.
8. Length of the LOR should be somewhere between 300 to 400 words, within a single page.
9. The LOR should also consist of a few weak areas of the applicant, but in a constructive manner. For instance, although Mr.X does not have a good hold on Java still he managed to write clean codes for the Project XYZ and completed the development part very well. (this constructively highlights one weaker area of the applicant without giving a negative impression)
10. An LOR should explain the relationship between the candidate and the recommender with clarity so that the admission committee finds it easy to identify the same.
11. Comparisons on performances by manager/team lead from teammates should also be there.
12. Along with the Official Letterhead, a rubber stamp of the respective Company/MNC would make your LOR unique from most of the candidates, however it is not necessary.
13. Lastly, always select a referee with whom you have a strong and friendly relationship, so that you might call him anytime and insist on submitting the LOR on time without any hesitation.
If you have any additional queries, feel free to drop them in the comment box below and I will be happy to resolve them.
I hope this helps you. Best of luck!
Best Regards
Mohammad Yahiya Khan (He/Him/His)
#masters #mastersUS #ms #lor #USA #yocket
#MSCS #msusa #professionallor
