It has been two years since the farewell at BJC. I hope things are going well. I was fortunate enough to take the IE 480W (my capstone project – Volcano Lake Sampling Vehicle) under your mentoring, and I am proud of the A I received in your class. I am writing to ask a huge favor – I’m applying engineering management master program at Cornell, USC, Duke, Dartmouth and my dream school Stanford, and I was hoping you’d consider writing a strong letter of recommendation for me. To save your precious time, I have some information you might need such as my resume, personal statement attached at the bottom of this email. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help you draft the letter (I have wrote a template).

 

I have not doubt that you are the perfect person to writing me a recommendation letter. 1. Many erudite professors I may have seen, but you are the one who lead me to the beauty of industry. I never felt so eager to transcend my knowledge to industry application and social welfare. 2. Through out the Volcano Lake Sampling Vehicle project, you observed my ability to apply my innovation and knowledge to a product. 3. You graduated from Stanford, and Stanford is my dream school.

 

My other references will be able to talk about my academic/professional ability, but you are the only one who really knows how I combined both of those (how I applied academic knowledge to industrial product).I was hoping maybe you could talk about my innovation in the design and voted as the best design. Also, talk about the my contribution on material selection using CES advance material selecting software so that the material meet all the requirements under violent environments while minimizing the cost. Maybe also talk about my teamwork and organizing ability as team secretary: 1. I made the schedule and ensured that everyone follows it. 2. I organized all the team meetings, no one ever missed one single meeting.

 

I know you are quite busy, so I would be very grateful if you were able to write me this recommendation, and I thank you in advance for your time and consideration! I doubt I expressed my appreciation enough in class, but you had motivated me to pursue my dream as an entrepreneur, and for that I can never express my gratitude!

 

Sincerely yours,

Z (Ziwang Sheng)

 

Some brief updates after I graduate:

After graduation, I went to Danfoss Power Solution. After one year’s accumulation of knowledge, I decided to apply the knowledge I learned in the college and industry in US to my mother’s company in China. Currently, I’m a project manager in her company. During the job, I concluded that it is the management knowledge we need most rather than technology. In this case, I applied the Management Science and Engineering (MS&E) program from above listed school. I believe this program has produced leadership in this new discipline at the interface of engineering, business, and public policy, which are useful in my future career. In addition, skills such like entrepreneurship management, risk analysis, marketing and related economics that I could learn from MS&E will also add my value in this competitive business world.

So I need 2 customized writing: 1. an email to the professor to ask him to write me a recommendation letter (rewrite and polish). 2. A recommendation letter draft he can use (writing from scratch). Feel free to add/delete sentences even paragraphs, but please keep my personal experiences. In addition to the email draft, I also have my resume attached for you reference. You don’t need to edit my resume.