Prof Szajda's Policies Regarding Graduate School Letters

First, let me say that writing these letters is one of the more enjoyable aspects of my job. I am helping someone who enjoys computer science take the next step toward becoming an expert in the field. I say this because the rules below may seem restrictive. They are necessary however, because of the number of requests I receive along with the number and choice of schools to which students apply. These policies are primarily meant to help the process work smoothly -- I can write letters without being rushed (it turns out that the time when students need these letters is often the busiest part of the semester) and that I feel will help a student, and the student hopefully ends up at a program at an appropriate level to nurture their talent and promote their career. So, let's discuss what many students thinking about graduate school do not fully understand: the relationship between a graduate thesis advisor and a grad student. Graduate school is not like undergraduate school in many ways, but especially as concerns funding. Most computer science graduate school students receive funding from their thesis advisor. This funding pays for a student's tuition and other university fees, pays for some travel to conferences, and pays for a salary sufficient for the student to live (pay rent, buy food, maintain a (typically relatively inexpensive) car, etc.) In total, this can end up costing your advisor around $75,000 each year. This money comes from grants. This means that you are effecively an employee working for your thesis advisor. It is a simbiotic relationship -- the students receives a "free" graduate education, while the thesis advisor receives a trained person who can write prototype code for research projects, help train younger grad students, lead portions of the research, etc. Note because this is in many ways an employee/employer relationship, it is not unheard of (and in some places not at all uncommon), for graduate students to be fired by their advisor, meaning that the advisor will no longer fund the student. Also, because funds are not unlimited, it may be the case that a particular graduate advisor only has funding for one additional student in a given year. They may (and often do) ask whether in my opinion a student is deserving of that one spot. Because you will be an essential part of any graduate advisors research group, that advisor needs to know many of the same things that any employer would need to know.

Is this person responsible? Will they consistently show up on time, work hard, and complete assigned tasks on time. Basically, are they dependable. At this level, a person who cannot do what is required, regardless of the reason, is a detriment to the research team.
Do they have the required background to do the work? Graduate students are not unskilled laborers. They are performing cutting edge research, and thus need to be highly skilled.
Do they have sufficient motivation and self-discipline to complete their graduate work? Ultimately, your thesis advisor wants to see you progress toward the completion of your degree. There is both a personal aspect to this (pleasure at helping develop and educate a new colleage), and a practical one -- as you progress toward your degree and grow as a researcher, you are able to assume greater responsibility, become more productive, work on increasingly difficult problems, and train younger grad students so that the talent pipeline in the group remains well-stocked.

In my graduate school letter, I am making a statement to my colleagues (who are often friends and/or former students and/or coauthors of mine) that from what I have observed of your performance at UR, you have demonstrated the qualities that will make you a valuable member of their research team. Some things that influence my opinion of this are

Does this student persevere? Graduate school, while often greatly fulfilling, can often be a grind. There will be times when research and grad school in general is frustrating. When it gets difficult, will a student collapse, or will they raise their game to meet the challenge? Will they put their nose to the proverbial grindstone, or will they whine that life is difficult?
Does this student work well when under stress? Do they make life difficult for their groupmates, or are they the kind of person that helps move the group toward completion of their goal?
Does this person care about the quality of their work? That is, is this a student who does the bare minimum, treating school as a series of hoops to be jumped, and satisfied with "good enough" or do they strive to produce quality work even if it goes beyond what they have been asked to do. Consider that what you are asked to do in an undergraduate class is often geared toward the median level of the class, rather than toward the truly exceptional students in the group.
Is this person sufficiently organized? That is, does their work reflect adequate planning and time for completion, or are they often beginning work later than they should, and rushing to finish at the deadline (or worse, late).
Is this person pleasant to deal with? You will be a member of a graduate research team. Do you respect people from backgrounds different from your own? Are you a person who people enjoy working with? Folks who are difficult to work with often become worse to deal with when a group is under time deadlines and pressure, which is often in grad school.
Does this person exhibit the ability to develop creative insights into material. Research is all about seeing material in a way that others have not. So how well do you take what you know and use it to solve problems that don't appear like anything you've seen before?

You should think of all of these things as you move through your coursework at UR. What will I be able to write about you when the time comes for a letter? So, my policies. First, please remember that what I write reflects what I have observed at UR. You may be a great person and one day turn out to be a Turing Award winner, but if you are earning C grades in my courses, I'm not going to write a recommendation for you for graduate school. The first, and foremost policy is that I do not give "blanket" agreements to write grad school letters. This is explained further below.

I reserve the right to not write letters to specific schools. If you want to apply to Stanford, but I do not feel that your performance at UR demonstrates that you are up to that level of graduate school, then any letter I write to Stanford will only hurt your application.
I will not write for you unless you have, in your pool, what I consider at least two "safety schools". Some students insist on only applying to the very top graduate programs. This is short sighted. Even the very best students can end up without any graduate acceptances if they only apply to the very best places. Applying to graduate programs is not like applying to undergraduate. Wherever you apply, some professor has to agree to fund you. You may be brilliant, but have little experience in their area of research. And at the best places, especially, almost all of the applicants are indeed brilliant. It is far more likely that at a good, but not, say, top 5, program, a professor will take a chance on funding a brilliant, but perhaps less experiened in their subfield, student. Finally, many of the top researchers in computers science did not attend "top 5" graduate programs. Who you work with on your dissertation can be a lot more important than where you did your graduate work when it comes to determining your future employment prospects.
I will write letters for you to no more than 12 places. I have had requests in the past for more than 35 letters from a single person. Often these letters are are for multiple programs at a single school. Part of what I am asked to comment on in letters is how certain you are about what topic you want to pursue in graduate school. How can I say you are certain about what you want to study when you can't determine which of four programs at a single school you wish to apply to?
I need at least one month advanced notice before any required letter deadline. You may think I am kidding, but I have received requests to write letters less than two hours before the letter deadline.
Prior to writing the letter (and a good deal prior to the deadline), I will need to see any essays or the like that you are writing to graduate programs to which you are applying. This is necessary so that I am on the same page that you are. It does no good if I write that you love security and wish to pursue that when your essay says you've always been fascinated by compilers and want to work in that area.