Letter of Recommendation

If you are looking for a letter of recommendation from me, please read this page carefully before emailing me. Following these guidelines makes my letters better, saves you back-and-forth email, and protects your deadlines.

When to ask

The minimum lead time I ask for is:

  • Three weeks before the earliest deadline for graduate school applications or jobs
  • Five weeks for major fellowships (SSHRC Doctoral, Vanier, Fulbright, Rhodes, Trudeau, Marshall, etc.)
  • More is better — a month is comfortable, two weeks is tight, less than two weeks means I will probably decline

If you email me less than two weeks before a deadline, I may still agree, but I will not be able to write my best letter under that time pressure and I may not be able to submit to every program on your list.

I am busiest with letters between mid-October and mid-December. If your deadlines fall in that window, please ask in September.

Am I the right letter writer for you?

Before asking, please self-assess. A strong letter needs a letter-writer who knows you well and thinks highly of your work. Ask yourself:

  • Have you taken a course with me where you earned a grade I can speak to substantively?
  • Have we had meaningful interactions beyond class — office hours conversations, lab work, a thesis, research assistance, or extended email exchanges about your academic work?
  • Does the program you’re applying to care about the areas I can speak to: quantitative methods, survey design, post-Soviet politics, misinformation, political economy of development, African politics, field research?
  • Do you have at least one stronger option (e.g., your honours supervisor, a professor you’ve done sustained research with, someone who can speak to your writing in detail)?

If you have taken a single large lecture with me and we have not spoken outside class, I will struggle to write you a strong letter. A generic “good student” letter from me will not help your application. Be honest with yourself, and consider whether another professor would be a better advocate.

How to make the initial request

Send me a short email with:

  1. A one-paragraph reminder of who you are — how we know each other (course, lab, thesis), when, and the highlights of your work together
  2. A brief summary of what you are applying to and the earliest deadline
  3. Why you are asking me specifically

I will reply within three business days to tell you whether I can write a strong letter. If I agree, I will tell you how to send me your materials — typically a personalized upload link, occasionally email. Please use whichever method I specify; it keeps everything organized on my end and makes it far less likely that something falls through the cracks.

What to upload

When I send you the upload link, please include all five of the items below in a single submission:

1. Statement of purpose. If you are writing different statements for different programs, include each one labeled by program. I will read these to anchor my letter to the specific story you are telling admissions committees — rather than writing a generic letter that could apply to anyone.

2. Unofficial transcript. So I can reference specific grades and courses. If you have taken other methods or quantitative courses beyond what you took with me, the transcript tells me.

3. Your CV or résumé. Keep it to one page for undergraduates, up to two pages for MA students.

4. Program spreadsheet. A list of every program or job you are applying to, with: program name, institution, city, deadline (date + time + time zone), submission method, portal URL, whether the letter is waived-right-to-access, and any program-specific requirements. An Excel file or Google Sheet works. This prevents me from missing deadlines or uploading to the wrong portal.

5. A self-brief. This is the most important document and the one most students skip. Write me a 1–2 page document that includes:

  • Three specific moments from our work together that stood out — a comment you made in class, a question in office hours, a paper you wrote, a piece of research assistance. Being specific jogs my memory and gives me raw material for the letter.
  • Your career goals and how this program fits into them
  • What you want me to emphasize that may not be obvious from your statement of purpose (leadership, resilience, unusual coursework, public-facing work, language skills, etc.)
  • Any weaknesses you want me to pre-empt — a dropped grade, a gap year, an unusual academic path, an incomplete course. If I address these head-on, they have less weight; if I leave them unaddressed, admissions committees fill in the blanks on their own.
  • Your cumulative GPA, and any specific courses you want highlighted

Without the self-brief, my letters are generic. With it, they are specific and memorable.

Process and timeline

  1. Initial inquiry — you email me asking if I can write. I reply within 3 business days.
  2. If I agree — I tell you how to send materials (upload link or email) and you submit all five items in a single batch.
  3. I draft the letter — typically within a week of receiving your materials, sometimes faster.
  4. I submit — I upload to each portal on your spreadsheet. For letters I send by email, I CC you on the first submission so you have confirmation.
  5. You confirm and update me — let me know whenever an application goes through, and eventually how the decisions come out.

What to do after you submit your materials

  • Reply to my confirmation so I know you received my “letter submitted” notifications
  • Send me updates on outcomes — accepted, rejected, waitlisted, whichever. Not for ego reasons: your outcomes help me calibrate how to write future letters for other students.
  • Send a brief thank-you note. Not a gift. A note.
  • Stay in touch. Add me on LinkedIn, email when you have news, update me when you graduate or take a new position. I think about my former students often and I genuinely like hearing what happens to them.

Language

I can write letters in either English or French. For international programs outside Canada, I recommend English unless the program is in France, Belgium, Switzerland, or Francophone Africa. For Quebec or bilingual Canadian programs, either works; tell me your preference.

Letters I will write

  • Graduate school applications (MA, PhD) in political science, public policy, international affairs, development studies, and related fields
  • Fellowships and scholarships (SSHRC, Vanier, Fulbright, Rhodes, Trudeau, Marshall, etc.)
  • Research internships and summer programs
  • Jobs in research, policy, international development, data science, NGOs, think tanks, and civil society
  • Former lab members years later — once you’re in the lab, you’re in the rotation. No expiration date on letters of recommendation.

Letters that work best

A few honest observations after writing several hundred of these:

  • Strong letters are specific. The best letters include a concrete anecdote that shows what makes you distinctive — an observation you made in class, a question no one else thought to ask, a creative methodological choice in a paper. This is why your self-brief matters so much: it gives me the raw material.
  • Strong letters acknowledge limits. Good letter-writers do not pretend to know things they don’t. If I acknowledge that I only know you from one course, admissions committees will trust the parts I do claim more than if I oversold our relationship.
  • Strong letters come from specific advocates, not generic ones. A letter from a methods person carries weight for methods-heavy programs. A letter from a post-Soviet specialist carries weight for programs with regional experts. Think about match.

FAQ

How many letters can you write for me? There is no hard cap, but I ask that you ask early — especially during fall application season — so I can schedule my time.

Can you write me a letter for a non-academic job? Yes, if it’s a field adjacent to research or policy (think tank, NGO, data science, government research, journalism with a data bent). Tell me in the initial email what kind of job it is so I can tailor the tone.

Can I see the letter? No. Letters of recommendation are confidential by convention — admissions committees and employers trust letters that the student has not read. You can ask me generally what I plan to emphasize, and I may share key themes, but I will not share the text.

Can you write me a letter for medical school, law school, or a pure economics PhD? Probably not. These fields have specialized letter conventions that I cannot speak to effectively, and a letter from me will be less useful than one from a professor who regularly writes for those programs. Ask someone in that field.

What if I forgot to include a program on my spreadsheet? Email me the additions — program name, institution, deadline, submission method. Try to catch this early rather than late.

What if my deadline is in less than two weeks? Ask me anyway, but understand that I may decline or limit how many programs I can write for. Have a backup plan.

Can I reuse the same letter for multiple programs? The core letter is the same across programs. I tailor the opening and any program-specific details. You do not need to do anything — I handle tailoring once I have your spreadsheet.

Can I get a letter years after I graduated? Yes. Email me the way you would for a first-time letter, and include a short note about what you’ve been doing since we last worked together. I will likely still have your prior folder and can build on what I wrote before.

Contact

If you have any questions about this process, or if you want to ask whether I would be a good fit to write your letter, please email me at aaron.erlich@mcgill.ca.