Tufts Blogs

Hello counselors and teachers! As you know, recommendation letters play an important role in our admissions process. We value getting to know about our applicants as students, friends, and community members, especially from the perspective of someone who knows them well. My colleague Gracie has already written a blog sharing some excellent recommendation tips. However, today I will be focusing specifically on how to write a recommendation letter for an engineer. All of her tips still apply, but I hope that by explaining what we look for in an engineer, this blog will help you take your engineering recommendation letter to the next level!

1. Engineering Soft Skills!
When evaluating our engineers, beyond looking at their academic preparation for Engineering, we're also looking for soft skills and more personal aspects of what could make them an engineer. Some of this can come through in a student's writing about working with their robotics team or about their love for taking things apart, but a lot of it comes through the recommendation letters.

1. Collaboration is a huge aspect of Tufts School of Engineering. As an Tufts Engineer, you will never be doing your homework or projects alone. Does your student work well with others? Do they listen and communicate effectively? We want to know what kind of team member they are, whether they play the leadership role and are effective listeners or whether they are the glue of the group, playing flexible supporting roles and helping the group think critically about their work. Both are great!

2. When I think of a Tufts Engineer, I think about a student who isn't afraid to dive into projects and try new things. Sometimes this means failing and not getting it right the first time. We're interested to know if a student is the kind of engineer that is reflective about their work, willing to make mistakes, admit their mistakes and learn from their mistakes!

3. Math is hard! Engineering classes can sometimes be challenging. How does your student deal with challenges? Following the previous point, engineering is all about problem solving, and students aren't necessarily going to get it right the first time. Do they have the grit and determination to work through it? Tell us about it!

Other soft skills of engineers we may look for are adaptability, time management, creativity, and passion, but by no means does an engineering student need to show all these skills to get into Tufts. Learning about these additional qualities just helps us round out a student in our holistic process.

2. Show Don't Tell!
This point is mentioned in Gracie's blog, but in an engineering context, specific stories can also showcase your student's engineering ability. Thinking about some of those soft skills, was there a time when a student went out of their way to teach a fellow physics student about a tough concept? Is there a quick anecdote to show how they can handle the hustle but have fun along the way? That’s Tuftsy. Thinking about the hard technical skills, was there a particularly impressive engineering-related project they worked on that deserves more detail? Math and science teachers, this is where your knowledge of the student's work really comes in handy! Guidance counselors, if you don't know much about their engineering abilities, talk to their STEM teachers, especially if you know the student isn't asking them to write a teacher recommendation.

3. What Type Of Engineering?
Finally, if you have any insight on what kind of engineering the student is interested in or what field they want to work in in the future, let us know! Most of the time, applicants will list their academic interests, but it helps to get confirmation from the recommendations that the student is in fact excited about Chemical Engineering. If the student is more of a liberal arts engineer, let us know too as it helps us paint a picture of who they will be on campus. Will they be a hardcore electrical engineer looking at drones and group intelligence or will they be an environmental engineer working with water testing in refugee camps, thinking about the social justice and the role engineers play in society?

Overall, in our process, we're not looking for the one perfect engineer with the perfect engineering personality and flashy hands-on engineering experience. We understand that not everyone has access to engineering classes, robotics teams or STEM research, which means that sometimes students aren't explicitly writing about their engineering "passion." We're okay with that. This is why we rely on the recs to give us some evidence of engineering and some flavour of traits that may show us hints of a budding engineer and that will help us better get to know the applicant in our process.

Photo from: Mad Fish Digital