Recommendation letters are perhaps one of the most, if not, the most important aspects of your application for research programs, internships, fellowships, and graduate school. Recommendation letters allow the admissions office to gain a perspective of who you are outside of the person described by your own essays. This is especially important in cases where the writing of the recommender doesn’t match the writing of the applicant (as an application reviewer for the MIT Summer Research Program, I have seen instances where the recommender expresses concern for the applicant’s dedication or abilities), so be sure to build strong relationships and a devoted work ethic with your recommenders. Generally, a recommender is a Principal Investigator for your research project, a professor who knows you personally beyond the scope of good performance in their class (i.e. a research collaborator or non-academic extracurricular advisor), or an internship manager. Your recommender must be able to vouch for your research performance, leadership skills, determination, and/or your ability to handle challenges and work with others.

A good general rule of thumb for determining who should be your recommender is the 2-1 plus rule for applications that require 3 or more recommenders. The 2-1 plus rule ensures that you have at least two recommenders, notably professors or employers, that are able to create strong letters describing your potential and work ethic as a researcher or employee, and at least one other recommender, usually a mentor or extra-curricular collaborator, that can speak on behalf of your personality and skills beyond the lab or internship.

Once you have decided who your recommenders will be, ensure that you give them at least one month in advance to submit their recommendation letters for your application. Recommenders, especially professors, are busy people who balance deadlines for grant funding, conferences, and other student projects, so please be respectful of their time. While some recommenders are completely content with curating recommendation letters a few days before and even the day of the deadline, chances are, your recommender would like as much time as possible to craft their best version of you in letter form.

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Ever had questions about formatting your CV for graduate school or for a research internship? Fear not! The following is a general template for crafting a stellar CV.

This is a short, usually comma-separated list of your interests, intended to help research program staff and admissions officers match you with a faculty mentor. Try to be as specific as you can (i.e. rather than saying that you're interested in computer science, mention the aspects of computer science that you're attracted to, like high performance computing, numerical algorithms, efficient 3D mesh generation algorithms, etc).

A list of the degrees completed, the name of the university you attended, and the (expected) date the degree was received. Example:

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Sept. 2022 - present Massachusetts Institute of Technology

B.S. in Computer Science, minor in Physics, Aug. 2018 - May 2022 University of South Florida

If you have any cool honors, recognitions, and are a recipient of things such as scholarships, put them here. Examples include any award placements for research poster presentations, the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, or university scholarships for merit or diversity. Remember, no matter how small you think your accomplishments are, they still deserve to be seen.

This is where you shine! If you have any research that was published for a conference, workshop, or in a journal, share that here. There doesn’t seem to be a specific format for citing, but APA format is usually a safe bet. Make sure that all of your publications have consistent formatting as well.

Any opportunities you got to share your research, such as talks, conference posters, undergraduate research conferences hosted at your school, all go here.

Generally, you may want to have two separate sections for research and leadership/community involvements. Here, you can list a summary of the work you conducted for various research projects. If you've done many projects and the CV section of your application has a page limit, try to limit this section to the research you did that is relevant to the research you want to do at your specific graduate school or research program. For research programs, if you haven’t conducted much research yet prior to applying, try to provide context in your cover letter or application essay for your background (i.e. lack of research opportunities at a small college or university, still a first-year undergrad, etc) and discuss how the research program can allow you to work closely with faculty or a research mentor that can develop your scientific skills and shape your research interests. Make sure you can demonstrate the program’s match with your research interests.

Include technical skills such as VASP operation for DFT calculations, bash scripting, and soft skills such as effective communication and team work.

This can be for spoken and written languages like French and Tagalog, but if you know any programming languages like Python, C++, or Julia, please put them here.

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[add Path2Research Links here]

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