This is not entirely the teacher’s fault according to me. Teachers are overwhelmed with a bunch of requests for recommendation letters. The students typically give minimal or no information about themselves. They simply go to the teacher an year or two after finishing their college and smile at the teacher asking for an excellent letter that praises them. How can the teacher help you if he/she doesn’t recollect any specific things about you? You can’t expect the teachers to keep a note of all the hundreds of students they teach every year.

The point here is NOT to copy paste recommendation letter from the internet and modifying it like most of the indian students tend to do. Those copied letters are useless as they say nothing about YOU as an individual. They speak of somebody but you.  And if you go straight to your teacher and ask for a letter, you may get nothing but an abstract letter that doesn’t pinpoint to the activities that you did.

Don’t give up. Don’t copy paste. There is an awesome solution to this problem. Take a print out of the document below, fill it with necessary details and give it to your teacher. This will help your teacher/professor write an essay that exactly describes the activies that you actually did and gives precise description your character.  Credit goes to Baylor university.

• What is the font size, font type that is to be used for a letter of recommendation?
• How much margin spacing should be used for a letter of recomemndation?
• How to format the heading, salutation, body, closing and signature?
• What text  should the introductory paragraph,  concluding paragraph contain? 
• Which areas should the letter of recommendation cover?
• What are the common errors commited in a letter of recommendation?

Here is the answer for all the above questions: