Letters of Recommendation

When requesting a letter, please provide all of the following information:

• Which class(es) did you take with me? Which quarters?
• Have we interacted in any other way outside of the course? (e.g. personal project, kept in touch)
• An updated resume.
• A list of schools, degree program and majors, and the application deadline. Specify your preference for each program so I know which letters need to be program-specific and which do not. I prefer to cap this to 5 programs.
• an up-to-date resume
• a draft of your Statement of Purpose. If you do not have this ready, please provide a blurb explaining the following::
  • why graduate school, and in particular, why an MS or PhD (or other degree)
  • • Masters' level, what benefit do you believe it will provide you?
    • Ph.D./doctorate, why? What do you think you might do with it?
    • Professional degree, why? What will it provide you over an academic master's degree?
  • why you are interested in the school: are there specific faculty or research areas that the school specializes in better than others?
  • why you are interested in the major (e.g. Computer Science). If your proposed major is CS but your undergraduate major was not CS, this is especially important. Some of these students have very interesting stories, so please help me highlight them.
  • which areas you want to specialize in and why
• If I agree to write a letter, you must add my information to the application and have the recommendation link sent to me ASAP.

If I have agreed to serve as a recommender, the next step is to enter my information in the application portal. You need to do this ASAP. Please use the following information:

• Name: Ryan Rosario, or Ryan R. Rosario. There is no accent mark on the a in my last name.
• Official Job Title: Lecturer. A common error is to just write "Professor" which conveys "fully tenured research professor" to the committee and may be looked upon as a serious error.
• Relationship: Here you can state professor for CS143 etc.
• Phone: (310) 825-1322
• Address: 404 Westwood Plaza, Engineering VI, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1596
• Email Address: Use the email address printed on my syllabus which is first initial + last name at see ess dot ucla dot edu.

Only include my academic/UCLA information, unless you are applying for a professional program.

When specifying where you are applying, please be specific:

• The name of the university and school (e.g. University of California, Irvine, Bren School of Information Science)
• The full name of the major / field of study (e.g. Mathematics of Computation not Math, Computer Science and Engineering, not just Computer Science)
• The abbreviation and full name of the degree objective. Not all masters and doctoral degrees are made equal.
• • An M.A. is not the same as an M.S., and for professional degrees, check if either of these even apply.
  • Example: "MSBA: Masters in Business Analytics" or "MEng: Masters in Engineering". Neither of these is an M.S. degree. "Ed.D.: Doctor of Education" is a doctorate, but not a Ph.D.
• In my opinion, it looks bad if any of these are incorrect in the letter.

Graduate programs typically reguire multiple letters of reference and each should tell a consistent story, or highlight different parts of you as a scholar. Particularly for graduate programs, a reference is asked to evaluate students not only based on their academic performance, but their creativity, analytical ability, research aptitude and interpersonal skills. There are no strict requirements regarding who you ask for letters of reference, but you will want to make sure that we have interacted enough for me to evaluate you on those skills. If you're applying to a Ph.D. program, you should also have a research professor, particularly in your field of interest, provide a letter as well.