What should you ask your referees to write about?

[FranzFan]

I am applying to MPP and MPA courses, and am about to send off reference requests to my referees. I am providing them with some fairly high-level guidance of the main things I would like them to focus on in their reference, so that it aligns with my personal statement. I am slo sending them my personal statement and resume.

But I'm not sure if there are any more specific points that i should be asking them to cover. E.g. should the reference discuss my qualities as a person, or should it focus on my academic and career achievements and how this prepares me for graduate study? Or should there be other things? Or should it be just open-ended? I would be grateful for your thoughts as I couldn't find much advice on this.

[fuzzylogician]

I'd keep the request fairly general, and offer to supply them with a summary of relevant facts to help them write a more detailed letter. I think this will go over better than actually telling them what to include in the letter. It's their choice what to write, and they have enough experience to know what should be in there. When you write the list, it's fair to point out particular things you've done, but it'd be odd to tell them which personality characteristics they should write about. 

[TakeruK]

I agree with fuzzy--you should leave it up to the writers to choose what to discuss. I think it is okay to remind your writers of your achievements and involvement in other activities by providing them with a CV and a SOP (or SOP draft). The SOP will let them know your approach to describing yourself as an academic and they can take cues from that to have their letter complement yours. The CV will remind them of what you have done and they can skim the CV to pick out some highlights as examples of whatever qualities they wish to write about you. Also, it's unlikely any one professor will know all of your life so the CV is a good place for them to learn some things about your for the first time too.

Think of the CV as a "cheat sheet" of your accomplishments and activities. You can consider sending your writers a different CV than the one you actually submit in your applications. You can edit the CV for your writers to be shorter perhaps (maybe some details can be omitted since they are from the same school) or rearranged to highlight the things you want to highlight more. 

I also included my GPA and my GRE scores to my letter writers and a 2-3 sentence paragraph of my research and academic goals for PhD program. I included this on a sheet of paper with all of the school LOR deadlines but this is also something that can be added to a CV sent to your letter writers (but I wouldn't put it on an actual CV for an application!)