Professors try to do the write thing

Anthony Grafton leaves his wife sleeping at 5 a.m., pads into the kitchen to feed their cats and then slips into his study where he works until it is time to wake his wife at a quarter to seven.

It is a process the history professor repeats nearly every morning, in part because of the massive number of requests he receives for student letters of recommendation.

Grafton estimated that he sent close to 330 letters out last year to schools and scholarship committees — though one student may account for as many as nine recommendations.

During the fall — a season swollen with internship and award deadlines — he may spend up to an hour every morning working on recommendations. And Grafton is constantly cognizant of the danger of blurring together bright, motivated students in the minds of discerning committee members.

"It taxes my knowledge of the English language because you don't want to say the same things about everybody," Grafton said. "I think we grade a little too high in our letter writing, just as we grade too high in our grading. It's better to be able to make more distinctions in a language. If everybody is brilliant it's hard to say in a convincing way, here is someone who really is brilliant."

Professor Oliver Avens, director of the undergraduate politics program, said he has never written that any student was brilliant. He writes an average of 10 letters per year and has advised several students not to apply for Rhodes scholarships.

They all applied, using his recommendations. None won.

"It would be nice if people had a realistic picture of what their chances are, because they should understand that it takes a long time to write a fresh letter of recommendation," Avens said. "But the reason — at least why assistant professors are pretty obliging — is they've gotten to the point where people have written for them, and that's one very, very important motivation for writing for students."

"That's what makes me do what I can for anybody," Avens added.

And when it comes to writing recommendations, there are certainly enough students to go around: sophomores applying to the Wilson School, seniors applying to graduate schools, aspiring interns, Rhodes, Marshall and Sachs scholars, among others.

And then there are the professors at other universities seeking tenure, whose recommendations require reading everything the professor has written in the field, including non-published work.

Professors sometimes must write letters for former students who have graduated. Grafton is still writing recommendations for a student who graduated from Princeton in 1982.

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"I actually try to hang onto things in class. When I notice someone saying something really smart or hard, I try to keep that in the back of my mind," Grafton said. "I always find when I'm reading letters, precise stories, precise accounts make much more of an effect than adjectives. You can say anyone's brilliant. Show me."

But not everyone is brilliant.

Economics professor Elizabeth Bogan, who said she spends four or five hours every weekend writing, called these recommendations the most challenging to write.

"The hardest ones are not an outstanding academic student but a nice person," she said. "You're trying to sell them as an individual for that."

But Avens said, "It would be more awkward to write something that's false. I will happily write for a B-plus student and give an honest appreciation of what they do well, but it will have some connotation of what makes them a notch below excellent. There are gradations of language that you use when you're essentially saying somebody is average. You use words like 'the student has interesting ideas.' "

To help distinguish students from one another, Bogan requires that students provide her with a portfolio that includes a transcript, resume, list of personal strengths and any papers on which she has commented positively. With that spread out in front of her, Bogan can spend up to two hours on each student's letter.

"It's a really big piece of my job," she said. "Is it exciting to do? No. But it matters and so I take it seriously."

So do students. Seth Green '01 needed eight recommendation writers for the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships — though he hesitated when he considered the time burden such incessant requests cause for popular professors.

"But then I thought about how much time I spent writing their papers," Green said. "And then I didn't feel so bad."