Your subject area expertise and/or familiarity with a specific scholarship would be welcome on an endorsement committee! These committees review applications from WashU students to determine which applicants move forward to the national competitions. Feedback from the committee members helps students strengthen and improve their materials. Time commitment consists of reviewing materials and a one-hour meeting (lunch provided). Please submit this form if you would be willing to join an endorsement committee.

Complete Endorsement Committee Form

To refer a student to our office, please fill out a reference form. We welcome your feedback and look forward to working with your students!

Complete Reference Form

Our Fellowships Advising Team would be delighted to facilitate a presentation in your classroom, to your student groups, or to provide formal information sessions about the advising we offer and national scholarships and fellowships for colleagues or students. If you would like to request a presentation, please email Brooke Taylor.
 

Email Brooke Taylor

If you’ve agreed to write a letter of recommendation for a fellowship applicant, please know it’s because the applicant holds you in high regard and appreciates your guidance and support. It also means you might feel stumped about how best to develop a compelling letter. First, feel free to ask the applicant for more information: a copy of their resume/CV, a draft of their written application, a link to the website of the specific opportunity they’re applying for, and maybe even a list of topics they think you could touch on etc. While you may want applicants to make your job easier and draft letters for you, the National Association of Fellowships Advisors Values and Code of Ethics shares that applicants should “Neither compose their own letters for faculty to sign (even at the request of faculty) nor ask faculty members to show them their own letters of recommendation.” If you agree to write a recommendation, we request that you abide by this guidance: write your own letter.

A writing technique that can make your writing process faster, more efficient, and more compelling is to follow the PIE plan: Point, Information, Explanation. Your letter should be a series of paragraphs that present specific information about the application: academic achievements you’ve witnessed, specific projects they’ve produced that you find compelling and innovative, groups or initiatives they’ve led successfully, etc. Organizing each paragraph so that it starts with a point, provides information, and then closes with an explanation will ensure that these specific bits of information are appropriately framed and contextualized.

To write a strong PIE paragraph, it’s often easiest to start in the middle and work your way out. Tell a story in the middle of a paragraph—that’s your information. Then, kick off the paragraph with a point—what you think this information shows about the applicant. Finally, close the paragraph with an explanation—how the information helps prove or support the point. A strong PIE paragraph will look something like this (the point is green, the information is blue, and the explanation is purple):

Seraphina’s leadership acumen is best reflected in the work she undertook as president of the underwater basketweaving club. Her junior year, when the vice president had resigned and the secretary was studying abroad, Seraphina nearly single-handedly organized the club’s annual “Wicker or Reeds? Baskets Across Time” conference, a multi-day regional conference attracting hundreds of scholarly experts and hobbyists. In addition to writing and distributing the call for papers and developing the conference program, Seraphina reserved lodging for guest speakers and the local convention center for the conference, negotiated catering prices to help the club stay not just on budget but below budget, and organized shuttle services to evening activities that she’d arranged throughout the city. This kind of undertaking would be a big ask from a team of professionals and Seraphina did it almost entirely on her own as a college student. And she did it well: more than one conference attendee remarked what a well-run and engaging conference it was. This kind of drive, attention to detail, and overall interest in doing good by others is a hallmark of Seraphina’s leadership.

Fellowship letters of recommendation should be produced on letterhead and include the date, your contact information, and a signature. The salutation will vary, of course, but greetings like “Dear Rhodes Scholarship Selection Committee:” or “Dear Members of the Mitchell Committee,” are preferable to greetings like “To Whom It May Concern.” For the signature, you can scan an image of your signature and insert it or use your cursor to produce a computer-generated one.