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I am wondering is it important who is writing our letter of recommendation? I mean, does it matter whether the faculty is assistant professor or distinguished professor?

Nate Eldredge
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user59419
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  • What are you applying for? A PhD program, a tenure track academic job, a non-academic job? –  Oct 05 '14 at 11:23
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    @shane I think in all cases, the answer will be yes. – xLeitix Oct 05 '14 at 11:56
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    I think this question is close to a duplicate of this one: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12959/who-should-write-a-recommendation-letter?rq=1 – xLeitix Oct 05 '14 at 11:57
  • I believe there are cultural differences here. In Europe, letters are often very short, and they basically say that the person worked with Prof. Bigshot; the reader is supposed to infer that the person must be really good if s/he worked with Prof. Bigshot. In the U.S., letters tend to be long and flowery, with claims that the student can walk on water. –  Oct 05 '14 at 16:28

1 Answers1

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If all of your choices wrote the same letter, then of course the letter from the distinguished professor would carry more weight than that of f the assistant professor.

However, often the letters from assistant professors are much more detailed and insightful than the letters from distinguished professors, because they have usually worked with the applicant much more closely. They can therefore offer more detailed insights than can more senior staff. This is not always true, but it is at least mostly the case in my experience.

aeismail
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  • I agree that a more insightful letter from a younger professor should often be balanced out against more standard letters from senior personnel (and I think this type of issue is exactly why we ask for more than one letter). However in my experience assistant professors do not work with undergraduate students any more closely than more senior personnel. By "work with", do you mean "do research with"? Because that is very rare for undergraduates in my discipline (mathematics), so I don't have much to compare with. – Pete L. Clark Oct 05 '14 at 15:31
  • @PeteL.Clark: I meant "have direct contact with": an assistant professor is more likely to have directly observed the work of the undergraduate (through presentations, through meetings and emails, etc.). – aeismail Oct 05 '14 at 16:03
  • Hmm. I don't doubt your experience; I would be interested to find out why it's different from mine. In the US, there is really no difference in the job description between assistant professors and tenured faculty that would lead the former to have more exposure to undergraduates. In fact, most assistant professors I know are so research-intensive and focused on that that they interact with undergraduate students less than certain tenured faculty who have decided to concentrate on teaching and undergraduate mentoring. – Pete L. Clark Oct 05 '14 at 16:55
  • On the other hand, in many top US departments undergraduates can build closer relationships with postdocs: at such places postdocs teach a lot of the courses for undergraduate majors, some of them really enjoy doing so, and it is easier to build relationships with those who are 5-10 years older than with those who are 10-50 years older. That can be a problem, because while undergraduates may not even clearly perceive the distinction between postdocs and permanent faculty, admissions committees certainly will. – Pete L. Clark Oct 05 '14 at 17:00
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    @PeteL.Clark: In my area—engineering—I believe it's probably because groups tend to get larger as professors progress in their careers. You simply can't get to know everybody working in your group well when there's dozens of them. – aeismail Oct 05 '14 at 17:05
  • @PeteL.Clark It's the same in CS. Around here, good full profs. routinely have groups with 20+ members. As a master student, I literally did not meet with my formal thesis advisor during the entire process. I only met him in person when I mentioned that I was interested in doing a PhD. – xLeitix Oct 05 '14 at 19:11
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    That's interesting. As you may know, math departments in the US are not organized into "research groups" (other than as a heads up as to what individual faculty members are interested in: some will belong to several groups). I think there are no research groups in the humanities either, and not in all of the social sciences. For that matter, what makes a good PhD candidate is someone who has taken (and completely mastered) the right classes and perhaps done some independent reading...which full professors are just as happy to supervise as anyone else. It really is different. – Pete L. Clark Oct 05 '14 at 19:23
  • (Lest anyone think I am knocking the STE (= STEM \setminus math) model: I have recently organized a "research team" of my own and am describing it prominently in my current NSF grant proposal. I now have four PhD students -- which may be the most in my department -- and one postdoc. I am seeing if I can work in an undergraduate to spend 3 hours a week working on my lecture notes and webpage. In the American math world, all this is rather unusual.) – Pete L. Clark Oct 05 '14 at 19:27