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How do I ask my professor for a reference letter?

Should I ask a professor for a letter of reference if I got a C- in his class?

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    Let me quote Mor Harchol-Balter, Associate Professor @ CMU, who nicely summed up the common sense: Ideally you would like to make all your letters of recommendation count. Consider the following two letters: i. Letter 1: “I highly recommend student X for your graduate program. Student X received an A+ in my undergraduate algorithms class. He was ranked Number 2 out of 100 students. He got the highest score on the final. He worked very hard all semester, never missed a class, and was always able to answer the questions that I asked in class. This conscientious attitude makes him an excellent candidate for any graduate program. ” ii. Letter 2: “I highly recommend student Y for your graduate program. Student Y received a B in my undergraduate algorithms class. He was ranked Number 29 out of 100 students. Halfway through the semester we started working on network flows. Student Y seemed extremely excited by this topic. He disappeared for 4 weeks and even missed an exam. However when he came back, he showed me some work he had been doing on a new network flow algorithm for high-degree graphs. He had done some simulations and had some proofs. I’ve been working with student Y for the past couple months since then and he is full of ideas for new algorithms. I think student Y’s initiative makes him an excellent candidate for any graduate program.” Which letter do you think is stronger? It turns out that Letter 2 is very strong. Letter 1 actually counts as 0. At CMU we mark all letters like letter 1 with the acronym D.W.I.C.. This stands for “Did Well In Class” which counts for 0, since we already know from the student’s transcript that he did well in class. By contrast, student Y’s letter gives us a lot of information. It explains that the reason student Y didn’t do better in class was that he was busy doing research. It also tells us that student Y started doing research on his own initiative, and that he is quite good at doing research. The professor was impressed enough with student Y’s ideas that he took him on as a student researcher despite student Y not having high grades.

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Yes, but word your request like this: "Do you feel you could write me a good letter of recommendation for ___?" If not, the professor can just say no, and they won't need to put in the time to do something that would hurt you anyway.

Lisa Borodkin

It depends on the relationship you have with your professor - one of my 4 core LORs came from a professor who taught a class I got a 2.6 in (I did comparatively well on problem sets, but I ****ed up on the midterm). Didn't stop me from getting into both Brown and UChicago (and almost into Yale) with top student fellowships. He knew that I was special in some way from the very beginning though, and he really encouraged me to apply to Caltech (showing that he had a high opinion of my abilities). In a few cases, they can explain away your bad grade. But you should only do it if they know you well.

Alex K. Chen

Since you are already from IIT Powai, you would be well aware that there is hardly any difference between a CS and Civil guy in the campus though their rank in JEE would be wide apart. Same goes with the letter of recommendation. If you could get a letter of recommendation from a professor who has more credibility, and if he can recommend you without focusing on your weakness, it is always going to add more value.  Your score in GMAT or GRE automatically tells aloud about your talent and LOR is needed to know more about your personality and character. So, if through your LOR, you can portray yourself as a man of strong character, it does not matter whether you got a D or A+.

Ajeet Gupta

If you think college is about grades you have not been paying attention. College is about networking, building connections, and have the swagger to use them in a way that makes you look awesome while taking the path of least resistance. I am willing to bet only about 25% of your professors even know who you are, never mind what grade you got. If you make a good impression when you ask, the professor has some vague idea of who you are, and has the time you'll get that letter. Heck I know people that wrote their own letter, met their professor for 30 minute "about me chat", asked them to sign it, and they did.

David Hood

A C- is one step above failing at most schools. I can't think of any situation where you should ask for a recommendation, unless there are some exceedingly unusual circumstances. As for Alex's answer, I don't see how you can end up with a C- if you screw up on only just one midterm, the math simply doesn't work out (unless that midterm is like 50% of your grade or something).

Dan Zhang

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