How do you remind recommenders?

[giantpanda]

My letters are due in 10 days and I don't know how to remind my recommenders.

Should I send them a short e-mail saying... ?

What should I say?

Should I resend the online submission e-mail?

Should I send that and an e-mail?

Thanks

Edited February 19, 2011 by giantpanda

[newms]

A short email is fine. One way of being subtle about reminding them is to give them a quick status of where you are in your application - i.e. have you submitted, finished SoPs or how you did on the GRE, while reminding them that the deadline is approaching. A quick phone call is fine too.

You could also ask if they need you to resend the website link for them to submit the letter. Sometimes they miss it, or it goes to their junk folder.

Edited February 19, 2011 by newms

[Benzene]

I sent reminder emails, and noted in the email that I would resend the link from the application. However - my advisor was very casual about the whole letter process. She saw me freaking out when I didn't have her letter and another in on the due date, and kept telling me that it really doesn't matter if your letters are in on time, because they expect professors to be busy and run late. So, even with multiple reminders, phone calls, etc. I did not get the majority of my letters in until on the due date for nearly all my applications. If you must have the letters in to submit the application yourself, tell them, as that changes the game a little bit.

[Bukharan]

Send them a nice e-mail reminding of recommendation letters. Say that for their convenience, you are going to have the links re-sent

[eklavya]

In addition to what has been said above: if they are where you can visit personally, I also recommend to stop by their offices. Sometimes a face-to-face conversation is better than sending emails.

[Herbie]

Dr. X,

College X deadline is coming up. I just wanted to gently nudge you. If you need me to resend a recommender's link, please let me know.

Me.

I used that.

;Edit* Hm, weird spacing. Oh well.

Edited February 24, 2011 by Chulianne

[SuperPiePie]

Send a short and straight to the point email and thank them for their time. Also resend the rec request emails from the application websites afterwards so they don't have to dig through 50000 emails to find it.

[MoJingly]

I would take special care of the subject line too. Put your name and the school so they can find it no matter what they are searching for.

Also, this is GREAT advice I received from my current PI. When you send somebody your resume DON'T save it as resume.doc. Professors have hundreds of documents called "resume" and you want to be sure they can find yours later. Also, save it as a pdf instead of a word file to preserve formatting and avoid underlining of any words (names, places, projects, etc), that their computer will say are misspelled.

resume.doc

Mojingly Resume 2011.pdf