申请国外名校，尤其是申请研究生和博士，来自原学校的导师的推荐信是必不可少的。每到学校申请季，名校的Officer都要看大量的推荐信，所以让导师给你写一封让Officer印象深刻的推荐信是非常重要的。

优秀推荐信的几个要点：

-    要指出学生的独特性和特别之处：导师的推荐信里可以写写这个学生的特别之处，比如说特别有探索精神，能提出独特的观点，勤于思考等等

-    要有事实和细节：推荐信中要有学生具体的事例和细节，而不是简单一句“能力很强”就一笔带过。

-    要客观和中立：推荐信里不能过分吹嘘和夸大事实。突出优点，缺点可一笔带过。

-    要有感情：导师在推荐信里要表达对学生的喜爱和赞赏，以及对其更高的学术追求表示支持和鼓励。

下面我们来看一下加州大学伯克利分校（University of California, Berkeley）学校网站给出的一篇推荐信的模板。

http://gsi.berkeley.edu/media/sample-recommendation-letter.pdf

Dear [recipient’s name]: or To Whom It May Concern:

It is my pleasure to recommend Jane Doe for admission to [name of program] at [name of university]. I am a fifth-year Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley. I came to know Jane when I was her Graduate Student Instructor for Philosophy 111: Ethical Relativism, taught by Professor John Smith. The course comprised [short description of course]. Jane distinguished herself by submitting an exceptionally well researched and interesting project on ethical practices in ancient Greece. I would rank her in the top 2% of students that I have taught in the past five years in respect of her writing ability and research skills.

Overall, Jane is highly intelligent and has good analytical skills. Her project on ethical practices in ancient Greece demonstrated her ability to come a detailed understanding of the ethical practices of another, very different, culture, and to analyze the consequences of those practices for contemporary ethical theories. She gave a particularly interesting discussion of the difficult practice of infanticide, and showed both sensitivity and detachment when discussing its ethical consequences. Her overall intelligence is also reflected in her grades for the course, which were by far the best in the class.

Jane has excellent communication skills. Her written work is both clear and concise, as well as interesting to read. She demonstrated her oral articulateness in the discussion sections that were an integral part of the course. Each discussion section focused on a particular ethical dilemma. Students were required analyze morally problematic situations, and to develop and argue for their own ethical views with regard to the issue in question. Jane was highly proficient in applying the course material in analyzing the problem situations. She always explained her views very concisely and gave supporting arguments that were both clear and persuasive. Jane also demonstrated good teamwork skills in group assignments.

At a personal level, Jane is a well disciplined, industrious student with a pleasant personality. She went well beyond the course requirements in the quantity and quality of her project, putting in a lot of extra research and attending office hours every week. Throughout the course, Jane demonstrated great perseverance and initiative. Not only was she interested in and motivated to learn the material, but she also put great work into assimilating it to her own experience and developing her own ideas about each ethical topic that we discussed.

Jane is unquestionably an exceptional candidate for graduate study in Ethics. Jane’s work in Philosophy 111 suggests that she would greatly benefit from the opportunities for intellectual development provided by a sustained period of graduate study. She has proven herself to have the perseverance, initiative, and Sample letter of recommendation intellectual creativity necessary to complete an advanced graduate degree. I would therefore highly recommend Jane Doe. If her performance in my class is a good indication of how she would perform as a graduate student, she would be an extremely positive asset to your program.

If I can be of any further assistance, or provide you with any further information, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Yours sincerely,

[Sender’s signature]

[Sender’s name and title]

不同学科的推荐信有不同的侧重点，学生在请导师写推荐信之前要先跟导师沟通清楚，上课的时候要积极主动地表现，争取给导师留下好的印象，同时也是为自己以后的研究生和博士生申请之路加分。