Recommendation letters

Who qualifies as a recommender

The CSC requires two recommendation letters for Master's and PhD applicants, and they must come from associate professors or full professors. A lecturer, teaching assistant, or your employer generally does not meet the requirement, however well they know you. The recommender's rank matters because the committee reads the letter partly as a senior academic vouching for you.

Choose recommenders who actually know your academic work - someone who taught you in a small class, supervised your thesis, or ran a project you contributed to. A glowing letter from a famous professor who barely remembers you is weaker than a specific, detailed letter from an associate professor who supervised your final-year project.

What makes a letter strong

The best letters are concrete. Instead of saying 'the student is hardworking and intelligent', a strong letter describes a specific project you did, the problem you solved, and how you compared to peers ('among the top three of 120 students I taught this year'). It comments on your research potential - curiosity, independence, ability to handle setbacks - because that is exactly what a CSC committee and a future supervisor care about.

For PhD applicants in particular, at least one letter should ideally come from someone who knows your research directly and can speak to your capacity to carry out an independent project. A letter that engages with your intended research area carries much more weight than a generic character reference.

The logistics - done ethically

In practice, busy professors often ask the student to prepare a first draft that the referee then edits, personalises and signs. This is common and acceptable as long as the professor genuinely reviews, revises and endorses the content - the final letter must reflect their honest assessment, not a fabrication you wrote and they rubber-stamped without reading. Never forge a signature or submit a letter the referee has not actually approved; universities do verify letters, and a fake reference can void your entire application and blacklist you.

If you do draft it to save your referee time, keep it honest and specific, then hand it over and let them change whatever they wish. Provide them your CV, transcript and study plan so they have the material to write from.

Format requirements

Each letter should be on official university or institutional letterhead, carry a handwritten or verified signature, and include the recommender's full name, title, institution, and direct contact details (email and phone) so the committee can verify it if needed. It must carry a recent date within the current application cycle - a letter dated two years ago looks recycled. Scan each letter as a clean, high-resolution PDF for upload.