Writing my own LOR

[AjjA]

I contacted a professor whom I work with in the past. She said she would be happy to recommend me and asked me to send a draft of which she will ( Clean up). I'm confused as I never did that before. Should I write an excellent letter praising myself then leave it for her to decide, or should I just write an informative letter which includes details about my educational background, the work and techniques I did in the lab and my future goals. 

Edited October 30, 2015 by AjjA

[rising_star]

Here's a recent related post. 

 

[doctor-to-be]

I would do a bit of all the above. Be sincere and genuine, as if you're not, she'll probably see this. I would do exactly what she asked you to do. in this letter, certainly emphasize your weaknesses. Consider yourself lucky that you are allowed to do this. Most applicants are not is my guess. 

[Elvidi]

Bumping this post as I have a very similar question. I recently requested an LoR and the recommender asked me to write an "outline letter" that she could "fill in". Is this basically just writing my own LoR? Or something more along the lines of a bullet-list outline? I've never experienced this before and don't know how to even begin approaching it.

[sjoh197]

Not helpful in any way... but that really sucks. I don't think I'd be able to do it. Too stressful lol. Good luck. 

[fuzzylogician]

12 hours ago, Elvidi said:

Bumping this post as I have a very similar question. I recently requested an LoR and the recommender asked me to write an "outline letter" that she could "fill in". Is this basically just writing my own LoR? Or something more along the lines of a bullet-list outline? I've never experienced this before and don't know how to even begin approaching it.

This is the better version of "writing your own letter" where I think you are licensed to ignore wording and style. I'd just create a list of everything you'd want to have in the letter and ignore all the rest. So include things like where this prof knows you from, for how long, courses you took with her, grades you got, the papers you wrote for her, and other relevant things (did you often go to office hours? did your work stand out in any way? did you win awards while there? did you present anything at a conference? did you TA? etc.).

[Elvidi]

@fuzzylogician Thanks for the input! I think that's what I will end up doing. The recommender was actually a supervisor and already wrote me a short evaluation for my internship credit, so my plan is to send a comprehensive outline and attach the old eval as well as a sort of "remember why you liked me" reminder