Summary of Contributions for Reference Letters

[FarhadY]

Pretty much all the profs I'm asking for a letter from I've done a fair amount of research under. However, I haven't spoken to a couple of these profs for a few of months and considering how busy they are I wouldn't be surprised if they've mostly forgotten about the specifics of what I did. So I thought it might be a good idea to attach a document summarizing my work with them when I ask for a letter, and I found a couple of other posts here that suggested doing the same thing.

For this document, I was wondering if it would be a better idea to give a detailed page or so long description of everything I did or 5-6 bullet points summarizing my main contributions. The obvious benefit of the former is that I get to remind them of the details of everything I did, but it comes at the risk of them not wanting to read so much and pretty much ignoring the document.

For people who have done this in the past/planning on doing this now, what does your summary's format look like and how long/detailed is it?

Edited August 5, 2018 by FarhadY

[Warelin]

Do you have a CV listing what you've done for each of the professors? Oftentimes, professors will request your CV in order to better reference what they'll include on their letter of recommendation. The CV listing would also allow them to cite when and how long you did work for them and choose what they could better highlight in their letter.

[FarhadY]

7 minutes ago, Warelin said:

Do you have a CV listing what you've done for each of the professors? Oftentimes, professors will request your CV in order to better reference what they'll include on their letter of recommendation. The CV listing would also allow them to cite when and how long you did work for them and choose what they could better highlight in their letter.

I have a rough CV, but it's going to be a few weeks before I perfect it/add in the final details, but I'd prefer to ask for the references now. The CV also contains a lot of irrelevant information, since I would prefer if they focused on the work I did with them. I thought providing a summary of my work with them would essentially be a highlight of the relevant parts of my CV without overwhelming them with unnecessary information.