推荐信求建议！被老板diss了

老板也是国外回来的，让我写初稿，和老板交集比较多，一下子就写了2页，被狂喷说要我删到一页。。。可是我感觉几段经历都挺重要的，很不好删。老板是我两门课的老师，也是我毕业论文导师，还指导过我一个paper在美国获奖，现在在老板实验室gap搬砖。老板觉得我这样写没什么重点，我觉得相对来说只有课程经验不太重要的样子了。。。求大家给给建议，回复都加米！！！
To Dr. XXX, and the members of the admissions committee:

In my capacity as an associate professor in the School of Civil Engineering at XX University, I am writing to recommend X to your graduate program and for fellowship support. I came to know X in his junior year when he was a student in my Underwater Tunnel course, and I also advised him on his paper and oral presentation for The ASCE MIDPAC 2018 Water Research Paper Competition. He was also enrolled in my Highway Tunnels in the first semester of his senior year. Besides, I am his advisor for his graduation thesis, and have hired him as my research assistant after he graduates. During the two years I have known him, I have come to see his promise for becoming an outstanding graduate student.

For the Underwater Tunnel course, Minghao was among the very best students of my 80 students. During several lectures, he distinguished himself as uniquely perceptive. He could ask the most divergent questions about the engineering cases. For our course project, he wrote a research report on the Seikan Tunnel in Japan and presented an oral presentation about it. This work was not easy for a junior student. However, he performed super well and submitted an informative report—he conducted a comprehensive literature review, and successfully adapted Japan’s engineering specifications into our local standards. During review sessions, he persisted (through the groans of classmates) until he understood, although some of his questions were not relevant to the upcoming exam (hence the groans), but that didn’t stifle him. This curiosity and desire to learn leads him top grades in my two courses and also is a sign of a successful graduate student.

In his junior year, he also requested me to advise his paper for the ASCE water research paper competition, which allowed me to further observe his research acumen and capacity for writing academic papers and giving a formal, competitive presentation. His low-impacted development drainage system research was rigorous, as he persuasively combined a simulation with a case study. Although the mathematic modeling method was not quite up to publication standards, it was still a distinguished work for an undergraduate. I was deeply impressed by his work. For the presentation, he made concise slides and practiced the talk many times to achieve the best fluency. And his effort paid off—he earned a high score in presentation and finally earned third place in a competition at California. This was worthy of celebration, especially when he told me he was ahead of UC-Berkeley.

Since then, I have stayed in touch with Minghao and have cooperated with him in several research projects to encourage his gifts. He invited me to advise his graduation thesis. I assigned him and four other students a project related to shield tunnels. He investigated background materials quickly, and was hugely passionate about exchanging ideas with me about possible design and analysis methods. Even over our winter break, he asked me relevant questions, and upon returning, unsurprisingly, he was the first of the students to send me a research proposal. With this proposal, I could see his growth since the previous year—he addressed the shortcomings I had pointed out in his earlier papers. In the following months, we worked together on field investigation, numerical simulation, and design of engineering graphics. His final paper was excellent, and our professors all were impressed with his thesis defense.

In June this year, Minghao told me he wanted to decline the admission from Technische Universiteit Delft and take a gap year to explore his research interests and prepare himself to apply to American universities. I was surprised, since Delft is an excellent university with a solid reputation in civil engineering. Based on my positive experiences with him, I offered him a job in September as a research assistant in our laboratory. In these past three months, he has completed a literature review report, a lot of data processing and dozens of model experiments. He first assisted my Master’s students to conduct centrifuge model experiments, studying the dynamic response of parallel shield tunnels under loads induced by trains. He also finished the data processing and analysis for the experiments. He developed a Kalman filtering to improve our result that must have taught him a lot about signals and systems. He has reported our works at a Chinese Youth conference and is currently summarizing his findings and writing the paper for the Tunneling and Underground Space Technology. Also, based on his consistent performance, now I assign him to work with my students to conduct another project, supported by NSF-China, on the dynamic response of mountain tunnels under long-term loads induced by trains. I can confidently say his works rank top among all the undergraduates I have taught.

I also found other precious characteristics for a researcher over the past several months. His interpersonal skills are outstanding. Everyone who knows him praises him, and I know I can trust him to represent our research group on behalf of us to many other peers in conferences or departmental seminars. He also has leadership skills to bond a research team. He provides new energy to our research group—organizing basketball games and visits to our gym. He is disciplined and loves to learn, demonstrated by his auditing our senior courses and attending academic lectures after he completed his degree. He really loves these lectures, and listens to others' opinions, and passionately exchanges ideas with others after the lectures.

In short, X bears all the invaluable qualities needed, such as dedication, motivation, coordination, and the courage to take on challenges. He is also a skilled communicator who can always articulate his opinions and research results to his audience—both in written and oral forms. He is among the top undergraduates I have ever taught. I am confident Minghao is a strong candidate for your program and I enthusiastically support his application. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at xxx@xxx.edu.cn.



补充内容 (2019-12-26 10:57):
很感谢大家的建议！意识到自己的问题了，现在改！到时候再发来看看！谢谢！都加米啦回复

你老板说的对，你这确实太长了，还是别超过一页吧。

教授没这么写的，你是想删掉不必要的细节呢，还是想让委员会一眼看出这是你自己写的？

你这哪是推荐信。。。。整个一个自传了。我找美国教授写的，他们基本就几段话就搞定了，就跟写邮件一样。。。。

Fishyu 发表于 2019-12-25 10:40
你老板说的对，你这确实太长了，还是别超过一页吧。

我也想，但那样写感觉就要丢很多细节会变得没有说服力？而且确实重合经历很多

个人感觉太细了。。 例如什么talk 练习了很多遍直到熟练。。。细节太多我觉得反而是会有反效果的。让人觉得会不会是你自己写的。很多细节我觉得是一个professor不会注意到的。然后篇幅确实太长了。申PhD的话我觉得课程就几笔代过吧，主要表述项目和研究。

太长了，junior year都出来了。。。一般老师也不会记得你是几年级的，写那么多细节反而显得不真实。老师对学生的评价都是一些大概的，实验做的好啊，每次汇报做的好啊，文章发的好啊，这些。砍掉细节，突出你最想要通过这个老师展现的你的特长，我感觉是比较合适的。

同意，确实太长了，教授推荐信不会包括太多细节吧

文笔根本不像是教授的
太详细了，我还以为是自传

老美教授亲自写的推荐信顶多一页，有的还只有三分之二页，你这个太长了……不合适

kkjj1350 发表于 2019/12/25 11:14:10
我也想，但那样写感觉就要丢很多细节会变得没有说服力？而且确实重合经历很多

推荐信这个东西吧，感觉老美比较喜欢这种：我是谁谁谁，我和被推荐人啥啥关系，我们在一起工作了多少时间，在一起工作的时候我们多长时间见一次面，我们在一起工作的时候，因为被推荐人的努力，我们取得了啥啥啥成就；第二段三句话写被推荐人的三个优点：只有论点就好，不太需要细节；如果最后再写一句话，写我觉得被推荐人的啥啥啥研究方向和啥啥啥性格优点特别符合你这个program ，就更好啦。