Letter of recommendation

Prerequisites

Students who wish to apply to foreign universities, or for scholarships or other programmes are quite often required to provide a letter of recommendation. We are happy to do so provided that the following conditions are met:

• The letter is explicitly necessary for the application (e.g. this does not apply to applications for jobs or practical work experience).
• The applicant is known to us personally (e.g. from lectures, a study project, a final thesis or because s/he is a student assistant).

Recommendations are laborious to prepare. We, therefore, only issue them if they are necessary (and not if they might just be helpful) and we are able to add value to the application. This can only be done if we know the applicant personally; otherwise we cannot add any further information than that which would be found anyway in the curriculum vitae or the transcript of grades.

Requirements

The following information and documents are required for us to issue a letter of recommendation:

1. Letter of motivation;
2. Requirements and guidelines of the addressee;
3. Current curriculum vitae;
4. Current transcript of records;
5. Certificate of your ranking;
6. Relevant certificates and reports;
7. Any forms to be filled out;
8. Draft proposal.

The documents in 1–6 should be sent by e-mail as one single *.pdf document; any forms, as separate files (word files or *.pdf forms are best); the draft proposal, as a word document. The complete request should reach us three weeks before the deadline expires at the latest. We also reserve the right to invite you to a personal interview.

Regarding 1. Your short letter of motivation by e-mail should state which institution and for which programme your report is required for in addition to any other information that could be helpful to us.

Regarding 2. Institutions that request a report usually stipulate which information the report should contain and how it should be structured. They quite often provide the necessary documents. If such guidelines exist, kindly submit them. Should they be too extensive, we ask you to summarize them so that they do not exceed one A4 page.

Regarding 3. Make sure that the information in your application and especially in your curriculum vitae is the same as though you were applying for a practical work experience or a job.

Regarding 8. Check that your draft proposal is worded in such a way that it could be submitted as a final report. We will adapt your suggestion according to our knowledge about you. We ask you to submit a proposal draft for the following two reasons: 

• The quality of your proposal shows us how motivated you are. Whoever submits a poor proposal cannot expect to receive a good letter of recommendation and should brace themselves that we will refuse to issue the letter.
• Your proposal shows us how you think about yourself and helps us to assess you in a better way. In addition, you are given the opportunity to include all the requirements of the institution and to put in all the points that are important to you.

Proposals in English also enable us to assess your language proficiency.

Some addressees demand a form to be filled out rather than a letter of recommendation. In this case, we ask you to include your draft proposal in your letter of motivation and provide the form as a separate file. For TUMexchange reports, please include the letter of motivation for the universities instead.

Handing over the letter of recommendation

The report will be sent directly to the addressee or will be handed over to you in a sealed envelope. You will not be allowed to view the final document.