How to Write a Good Letter of Recommendation for a Student and What to Include

In this article, we shall take sufficient time to do an exposition on How to Write a Good Letter of Recommendation for a Student and What to Include. You will find out all that is required in the putting together of an acceptable letter of recommendation to any institution in good favor of a student.

As a student in need of who can write a recommendation letter for you, you will get to know what and what should be contained the letter you have need of. As a referrer who intends to write a recommendation letter for a student, you will learn how such letter should be properly written.

Read through carefully to get hold of the many information we’ve filled this post with.

You should know that a sincere and a positive recommendation letter gives a job, an admission or a scholarship applicant an edge above other applicants. This makes the craft of writing this type of letter an important one.

What is a Recommendation Letter?

A recommendation letter or a letter of recommendation is kind of letter which is often required of a student applicant by a school the student intends to be admitted for any sort of studies. This letter is usually written by a parent, a guardian, a teacher, a mentor or any superior person to the applicant. The writer must testify how much he or she knows the student applicant and how well behaved the student can be.

The basics of a student recommendation letter is to appeal to the institution to admit the student who wants to study in their school on the bases that the student is of good character.

A student recommendation letter MUST come from an individual who can attest to the behavior of the student for whom it is written for. In some cases, the writer is expected to pledge to take responsibility of any contrary character from the student if he or she is admitted.

Note that, this type of letter can be written in a case of seeking admission into a higher institution (university), in a case when one is applying for a scholarship or when asking for a job.

How to Write a Good Letter of Recommendation for a Student

To be able to write a recommendation letter that could be tagged “good“, there some steps you should learn and follow dedicatedly.

Before going on to how to get this writing done finely, here are few things you should hold onto in making the choice to write a recommendation letter for any student:

• Ensure that you have in good information all the required details from the institution you are writing to.
• You must be sure that the student for which you are writing the letter is one you can strongly defend his or her character.
• Do not make up non-existing information about the student as a bid to win him the chance.
• In describing the student, stay as real as possible.
• Provide a well detailed resume or CV of the student for the institution
• Do not fail to add verifiable and visible examples of the student’s behavior

Back to How to write a good letter of recommendation, below are some tips to guide you into writing a good recommendation letter for a student:

Do  Not Fail to Formally Introduce Yourself

As a writer of a recommendation letter, one of the basic things that gives your letter relevance and better chance of consideration is “your identity.” How well you are able to introduce yourself is an important thing to consider in writing a good recommendation letter. This is because, the institution your are addressing is interested in knowing what qualifications you have and what relationship you have with the person you are standing in for.

When introducing yourself in this type of letter, give good attention and concentration to your academic relationship with the student, if it is for an admission or a scholarship. Pay more attention to how you relate to him or her morally if it is a job that is being sort for.

Note that introducing yourself should have a place in the beginning of this letter. That is, it should be placed in a position it must be seen easily. Also, your introduction must be as it concerns the target of the letter (for a job, a scholarship or an admission). So that if it is for a scholarship or university admission, it should be as it concerns academics.

Make Sure you include the student or applicant’s qualifications in this letter

When schools for instance consider students to admit through recommendation letters, the school most times is interested in knowing from this letter what kind of qualification a student applicant has. Schools give preference to students with positive characters and worthy qualifications.

Therefore, to write a good recommendation letter for a student, the writer should as much as possible bring to light enviable qualifications of the person they are writing in favor of. The aim is to use this tactics to appeal to whoever is the reader of the letter and win a good chance for the student or applicant in the reader’s heart.

In writing about a student’s qualifications, the writer is expected to have known what exactly is needed by the institution or organization. So, only those qualification which could be useful to the school or company should be highlighted.

For example, a sports related school would be delighted to read about good sports performances from a student who wants to become one of them. An engineering company will be entice by reading about any form of achievement or contribution a job applicant owe to his or her name.

The applicant’s resume or curriculum vitae is a common place a recommendation letter can fetch the applicant’s qualifications.

See that You Conclude Your Letter Finely 

An important tip on how to write a good student recommendation letter is on how you do the conclusion of the letter.

When conclude a student recommendation letter, is advisable that the writer should do a short recap of the essential things in the letter. The benefit of this is that the addressee gets the feeling that the writer is resolute in all that was said.

Very important, do not ever forget to attach a contact address to a recommendation letter. Leave the reader with an accessible mean of reaching you if need ever arises. This means could be a phone number or an email address.

You can as well remind the reader that you are very much available for any further enquiries about the student or in any case that the student ever goes contrary to the institutions Dos and Don’ts.

What to include in a recommendation letter

To write a good student recommendation letter, here are some of the things to include to the letter:

• The writer’s official introduction
• The student’s academic qualifications
• Examples of verifiable traits that can be found in the student
• How the student can be of benefit to the school
• The writer’s possible contact address

These and other information are that may be specially required by the receiving institution are the things to include in a good recommendation letter.

Download a sample of a recommendation letter