positive letter.

[smartypants14]

if i ask for a "positive letter" and they agree, the contents are most likely going to be positive correct?

[fuzzylogician]

Yes. That should be the case whenever you ask someone for a letter. Any decent person should refuse to write you a letter if they can't say anything positive. That doesn't mean bad letters don't ever get written, but they are rare. If you don't know of a reason why you worry, I wouldn't.

[Guest |||]

Its probably more likely that a poor quality letter is written, rather than a letter indicating youre poor quality. 

[Lisa44201]

Not necessarily. I asked my letter writers if they would be willing/able to write me a positive letter of recommendation. 

[purpleperson]

I think it's pretty low to agree to write a letter for a student and then to write either a negative one or a lukewarm generic one.  The former is worse than the latter, of course, but I think both are pretty lame.  A letter doesn't have to be off-the-charts glowing, but I would say on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the strongest letter, it should at least be a 7 if you've agreed to help the student get into grad school.  I think the best thing for a professor to do if he/she doesn't want to write a letter, is to either flat-out say no or ignore the request altogether (assuming it's an email request.)  

 

To me, there's nothing wrong with saying no or ignoring the request.  If you say yes, though, and then sabotage the student, however subtly, you're just a jerk.  

 

I've only ever asked four people for PhD app recommendations, and all four said yes, although I ended up not needing the fourth.  But I have asked for LORs for something different about a year ago, and a few of the people (3, in fact) just ignored my request, while three others said yes.  I suspect, in the case of the ones who ignored me, that it was more because they had no time and just hadn't seen me in forever, and didn't feel any obligation, than it was that they wouldn't endorse me, as I had a decent relationship with all of them, at least as much so as I had with my LOR writers who have said yes.

 

In general, I feel really lucky with my LOR writers.  They're all full professors in my field; one has a star-quality reputation, while the other two are strong.  All three have been supportive, never ignored an email, never seemed annoyed, never not helped me.  I'd be shocked if any of them flaked out on writing a letter for me.  All three of them have even connected with me without my prompting them, to make sure everything was on track. It's not, however, because they think I'm a star or anything.  In fact, one of my letter writers believes I have no chance at top schools or even 2nd-tier ones, but does think I have some chance at 3rd or 4th tier schools.   I think it's just that 1) they're good people who if they say they'll do something, they'll do it, 2) they maybe like that I asked way early (back in March for one of them, late August for the other two), and 3) they can tell I'm super committed.

 

So...I know I'm bragging about feeling secure about letter writers....lol...but it's nice to feel secure about one thing, as my GRE score is mediocre, my subject GRE is horrible.  

 

Also, even though I trust all three letter writers, I don't know that all three letters are going to be "great."  I think one of them, in particular, might only write me a 6 or 7-caliber letter.  I'm just speculating.  But I'm confident that he's not going to write the negative or completely generic one, and that's all I ask.  

Edited October 30, 2013 by purpleperson