Recommendation Letters

If you would like me to write a letter of recommendation for you, please read this page first.

Who I Write Letters For

I write letters of recommendation for students I have worked with. You can ask me for a letter if at least one of the following applies to you:

  • You have worked with me for at least one semester in one of these programs: MIT PRIMES, the CrowdMath Internship (CMI), or UROP.
  • You have taken a course that I taught and excelled in it.
  • You have completed a research paper under my supervision (even if the paper has not been published).

If you meet one of these conditions but two years or more have passed since the last time we worked together, I will still gladly write a letter for you. However, I strongly recommend that you look for a researcher who knows your recent work: a letter from someone who has worked with you recently will be much stronger than the one I can write.

If you do not meet any of these conditions, but you still know me and believe I know you well enough that my opinion on your academic achievements may benefit some of your academic applications, write to me at and we can discuss your specific case.

I do not write letters of recommendation for students I do not know, or for students who have not worked with me at all.

When to Ask

Ask me at least three weeks before your earliest deadline.

What to Send Me

Send me precise information for each letter: the deadline, and where or how I have to send or submit it.

If you want letters for more than one institution, or for more than one program in the same year, write to me well in advance with a single list of all of them. For each place, give the deadline and where I should send my letter, and order the list by deadline.

Three-Reminder Policy

For each letter, send me three reminders:

  1. one reminder two weeks before the letter is due;
  2. one reminder one week before it is due;
  3. one reminder two or three days before it is due.

Send them unless you have already been notified, either by me or by the institution or program you are applying to, that my letter has been received.