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Re: Request to review my letter of recommendation
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31 Oct 2017, 08:16
Okay, for the first sentence, I might go with “It gives me great pleasure.” “A lot” is not grammatically correct. Great pleasure is just a bit more idiomatic/conventional. If you can, I’d ask your professor to put in the name of the specific university: “for the graduate course at your esteemed university, University Name.” Anything that shows that this is not just a generic recommendation but was written for a specific university helps. Likewise, if you could get your professor to add a sentence or two (or add it for him) naming one specific fact that makes that university a good fit for you and vice versa, that would be even better. (I don’t know your relationship/power dynamic with your professor/how easy it would be to request or make content changes vs minor grammatical ones. Obviously, just do whatever you can or want to amongst my more content-based recommendations below.
Next paragraph: For his final year project he, along with his team, was able to…
(along with his team modifies he, but the main subject of the sentence is he, so you need the singular ‘was.’ Alternatively, could change to “he and his team were able to”) There’s also something off about the way “which” is used to connect clauses in that sentence. I’ll make a grammatical recommendation on that below.
Another content point - It’s great that your team came up with this innovative project, but from the description it’s hard to tell how much of the innovation came from you specifically. You get that in the next couple sentences. But adcoms read these letters super quickly, so reading “he and his team were able to” as the first sentence of this paragraph might convince them to skim or skip this paragraph because they think it’s not going to be about your contribution. I might reword/reorganize this paragraph as follows:
In his final year project, a team project, Ajay showed great communication skills and ability to work with others as well as leadership skills. His team came up with ‘Sandman.js: Gesture Recognition Library,’ an innovative script which allows developers to easily create and incorporate gestures which can act as a replacement for menu items on their website. This project unambiguously pointed out Ajay’s quest for innovation. He helped keep his team on track by flawlessly maintaining an updated plan in his tracker which detailed the breakdown of the project…
[I also fixed a few minor grammatical errors from the initial wording above, so check it against the original closely.]
The next couple sentences are good grammatically, etc. Then, when he gets to “exceptional technical communication skill.” - if you use the sentence I recommended above, this becomes a little redundant. So I might expand out on it a bit so it’s doing something more specific/new for this paragraph: “during the presentations of his project, Ajay skillfully and clearly explained difficult technical concepts to a variety of audiences. This ability would serve him well in a masters program and subsequent career in accounting.”
After that, I’d make “Due to his overall superior performance…” a new paragraph. In general, I think the letter uses the pronoun “he” too often, and grammatically, the referent (you/your name) gets lost. I’ve tried to put a few back in, and I’m going to suggest that as well as some minor grammatical rewording for the next sentence:
“Ajay always stood out for his keenness to learn and his ability to quickly grasp new concepts and skills during my lectures.”
Next paragraph, “As a fresher in Calsoftinc”… not sure if that’s a typo or just a word I’m not familiar with. Is it supposed to be freshman? I also don’t know what a final year BE project is, so maybe helpful to give the full name of whatever it is instead of BE? Then you need a comma after ‘for the team’ if you’re going to keep it as it is, but actually the “which” clause makes it more grammatically complicated than necessary. I’d just go with “For the team of 4 students, I was the college project guide…”
Also, you need a comma after “technical issue” before he. Also between out and showing.
I might say …translated into the team coming in first in the Calsoft project competition instead of standing, but that’s a bit idiomatic and standing isn’t wrong.
Closing paragraph: I’d add a “his” before high level of drive.
Most of this is minor grammatical issues and/or rewording. This is a nice letter. I hope it helps you get where you want to go. -V.