Limit on number of Letters of Recommendation for student?

[Diogenes]

I'm a community college professor and a previous star student of mine who took almost all the classes I teach went on to successfully get their bachelors and is now applying for grad school. I am very happy to offer enthusiastic letters of recommendation for them but... they have applied to 10 schools so far and the requests keep rolling in. Maybe this is a fluke due to the budget constraints schools are experiencing due to COVID. Apparently their research advisor at their BA institution is encouraging this shotgun approach. I should note they are also applying to all the top schools in my field. Many are within their reach but I can't help but feel they are also not being that intentional with their selection. I can't imagine they've had correspondence with prospective advisors at all of them.

I am toying with the idea of putting a limit on the number of letters I'll submit for students in the future, say 6 per cycle. In my field that's a more normal application range. I think this could help them consider cases when other people's letters might have higher impact and help them give more focus and effort on where they apply.  And ease my workload. But I don't want to limit student's opportunities.  Thoughts? Do you all have a policy like this?

[Morden]

I've never had an undergraduate apply to 10 places, but when I do write a letter (or fill in one of those online forms--which is becoming more common), I keep a copy and cut and paste it for further references.

[Hibush]

Like Morden, I find the additional letters are pretty easy once I have the original, so it's not that big a deal. But you can constrain the requests, and make it easier on yourself, by asking the applicant what it is that makes each school's program a good fit for them, and why they are a good match for that particular program.

If you get a response, you have a sentence to use for customization with little extra effort. You are also requiring a small increment of energy from your former student for each extra request. That might keep the numbers down. You are also indicating that this information is also something the schools are expecting to see in the application, which is a service to your former student.

[doc700]

I've never limited the number but 1 trick I've learned from another faculty.  Ask the student to pull up all of the applications as separate browser tabs and then click "request letter" as near to simultaneously as possible.  This means that over the course of say 3-5 minutes you get all of the rec letter requests in your inbox, rather than 1 per day for two weeks.  This makes them easier to fill in as its an organized list in your inbox and they can be completed in one sitting.

I do have administrative support which can help out but just getting them all in a bundle helps a lot.

[mamselle]

Aren't there online structures for doing this? Might want to check on those.

My worst-case-ever scenario was the time I replaced the staff assistant for an institute director whose grad students routinely applied for 60 job openings at a time.

I was only supposed to cover her for a week, and no-one told me I was expected to do a mail-merge for this kid (who was not very pleasant whiny about it) AND look up all the complete mailing addresses because he hadn't.

I delayed a day while I checked in with the person I was replacing. I couldn't believe the kid expected so much out of his boss'/mentor's support staff, but he did, and they said I had to do it, so I had to stay one night for three hours to get them out.

At least I claimed overtime. 

M.

[the_geneticist]

I'd do what others suggest and write one letter to customize.  If it's just this one student needing letters to LOTS of places and not a normal occurrence, then it's not really worth looking into a management system.

Nothing is wrong with applying to LOTS of programs, especially now.  It's going to be really tough to get in to anywhere with the budget cuts.  Don't limit what you send for this one student, especially after they have already put in their application & letter request. 

[Parasaurolophus]

For years now (like, a decade plus), it's been normal in my field for students to apply to 10-20+ programs.

I don't think it's a great approach, but it is normal. And in some larger and better-supported subfields, it can make perfect sense to apply to 10-12 programs. There might well be that many good fits.


Besides: the problem here is with the way departmental applications are structured, not with what applicants are doing. No sense punishing the applicant for that. It's the same with job applications: filling out all that duplicate information on the forms is a huge waste of applicant time, but it's not really the applicant's fault for applying to 100+ jobs. It's the hiring portals' (and HR's) fault.

[Diogenes]

Lots of great insights. Thank you.
To address a couple things, I do have a template one I'm using for this student, and I wouldn't limit this student's letters this year. Only a possibility for the future. Even if it doesn't take that much time, it's still a major cognitive suck at the end of the semester- just one more thing to juggle.
And the added scales that many have us do now adds to the time suck. I get the value of LORs but think about how much total labor hours go into them! I wish my field was like medicine and there was one clearing house, or that they required less letters per applicant.

[arty_]

same as parasauolophus.

[nonsensical]

Ten schools is a normal amount in my field and I'd say close to the lowest number that I'd recommend a student apply to, especially if they're applying to top places that can be persnickety about admissions. I'd say ~15 would also be a normal number, maybe up to 20.

I like the suggestion to ask students to have all the portals send you the request one right after the other so that they're all grouped together in your inbox and may steal that idea for my own students. I also tell them to e-mail me their materials a month or two in advance (whether I ask for the longer or shorter period of time depends on how busy I am when they ask me) and to have the online portal send the request about a week in advance. That gives me enough time to actually write the letter and also enough time to see it in my inbox, since I don't necessarily go through all of my e-mails each day.

In my field it would seem very strange for a faculty member to limit how many letters they were willing to submit for a particular student in a given application cycle.

[teach_write_research]

Some programs (most?) are waiving the GRE so I'm guessing more students are applying, along with fewer job opportunities driving more apps. Maybe more are also granting app fee waivers?

I'm likely expanding a question in the info I request from students - I ask them to list the programs and in general why are you asking for the letter. Look for that to be why for each program. It helps to know if they are applying broadly or strategically.

[fourhats]

I do as others above do, and have a customizable template. The thing is, that students from years past often pop up again with letter requests, so I'm glad I keep them all in a file. Given today's uncertainties, I would expect that you will get a lot of repeat requests.

And the added scales that many have us do now adds to the time suck. I get the value of LORs but think about how much total labor hours go into them!

As for the time suck, well yeah, it's a drag. But it is also an important part of our professional responsibility. Beyond teaching and research and committee service, we have to write letters, review articles, and after a certain rank, do promotion reviews. It's our job, especially if we're tenure stream.

[mleok]

I agreed to update a letter I wrote for student last year, and he ended up applying to over thirty schools, which is absolutely ridiculous. I typically upload the letters myself, but this quarter, I might take advantage of our administrative support who will help with the uploading of the letters and those annoying little surveys that often accompany the submission. I wish schools would have a standardized site, or at least omit those annoying individual surveys.

[Puget]

I would not limit the number, but I wouldn't customize either (and don't expect customization when I'm reading LoRs for our programs).

I also second (third, forth?) the dislike of the ratings scales. Many are excessively long, generic, and impossible to fill out in a way that is both accurate and won't sink the student's chance (are they really in the "top 5%" in everything?). My least favorite one recently made you choose responses from drop down menus, where the options were not in rank choice order, but rather in alphabetical order!

[pigou]

This has to be field-specific, but I'd be worried if a star student only applied to 10 programs. 20+ is definitely the norm for someone who is very competitive. That'd include the top places that have an extremely low likelihood of admission, but the marginal cost of applying is so low that of course they need to do that. I tell them to apply to any program that they'd reasonably accept an offer from, rather than go do something else with their lives.

At the same time, nobody would expect a customized letter for the student. I write a standard letter and if I know people at the department, I send an individual email to flag the student. "Hey X, I'm reaching out to flag a student of mine who is absolutely stellar and has applied to your PhD program. Brief highlight of their work/research project/background. Let me know if you have more questions about their application."

The time to be intentional and selective is after they have multiple acceptances. Then they can talk to faculty and see where they think they'd fit in best. Otherwise, how is an undergraduate supposed to know what department would be a good fit, what the department culture is like, or even what kind of adviser they could work well with? They've never been to a PhD program, they've probably not had meaningful interaction with faculty at other universities, and they may not even know what kind of stipend and travel funding will be available to them. The range in my discipline is from $0 and $0 to $40,000 and $unlimited (where faculty fund their students' travel when they present research as a top priority).

Same approach to the job market: PhD students should apply to 100+ positions, (pretend to) be excited about all of them, and make their choices once they have some offers in hand. If they only applied to their top choice and happened to get an offer from there, they'd still be worse off -- because they lose out on bargaining power that comes from having multiple offers. (The top choice school doesn't know that they're the top choice, so they will sweeten the offer when they learn they're competing.)