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Henry Dyson, Director
LSA Honors Program, Suite 1330
419 South State Street, Ann Arbor MI 48109-1027
T: 734 764-6274 F: 734 763-6553
lsa.umich.edu/onsf
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Advice for Marshall Letters of Recommendations
Thank you for agreeing to write a Marshall letter for our student. This is a time-
consuming task and we greatly appreciate your efforts. This document provides
guidelines to effective Marshall letters based on the U-M nominating committee’s
collective experience of reviewing dozens of nominees each year. If you have any
questions or concerns, please contact Henry Dyson, Director of the Office of National
Scholarships and Fellowships, at hdyson@umich.edu. The deadline for U-M applications
and letters is the fourth Monday of August.
The Importance of Recommendations
Marshall Scholarships allow future American leaders in various fields to pursue 1-2
years of postgraduate study in the UK. Roughly 1,000 candidates are nominated by their
institutions each year for approximately 40 scholarships. Most applicants will have
exemplary academic records and extracurricular activities. What really sets Marshall
Scholars apart from the rest is the quality of their letters of recommendation. It is of vital
importance, therefore, that your letter be clear, detailed, well-written, and of a
reasonable length. The Marshall Scholarship’s online portal has a strict 1,000-word
limit. The most successful letters use this space to explain and illustrate how the
candidate matches the Marshall Scholarship’s three selection criteria.
The Marshall Selection Criteria
Marshall Scholars are selected for academic merit, leadership potential, and ambassadorial
potential. Detailed explanations of these three criteria provided by the Marshall Commission
can be found via the links above. To the degree that you are able, you should speak directly to
the candidate’s qualifications in each of these areas based on your direct observations and other
information provided by the candidate. However, it is likely that the candidate has asked you to
write as a recommender for one of these criteria in greater detail. Your letter need not emphasize
all three criteria equally.
Establish Context, Personal Knowledge, and Sincerity
State up front the context in which you know the candidate and establish that you have specific,
personal knowledge of the student's performance and career aspirations. Whenever possible,
include concrete stories about your academic or professional interactions with the student.
These are the most effective means of conveying a sense of personal knowledge and sincerity in
your recommendation and can be very powerful with readers. In asking for a letter, the candidate
should provide you with a copy of her/his transcript, resume, selected UK graduate program(s),
and some idea of the role your letter will play in her/his overall application package. Please do
not take affront if the candidate is unusually frank about this; we have helped them select
specific letter writers that will collectively represent each of the high points of their applications. If
you are unable to give specific examples of a candidate’s personal or academic qualifications for
the scholarship, we recommend that you make this clear to the candidate and, if necessary,
decline to write a letter of recommendation.
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Make the Case for Academic Excellence
Marshall candidates typically have > 3.8 GPA, are considered the very best in their departments
or cohorts, and have strong potential for top graduate schools in their field. If you are an
academic letter writer, the purpose of your letter is to explain why you think this candidate fits
that profile. If you’ve assigned the student an A+ in your course, you may want to say something
about what that distinction means. In research or term papers, be specific about the qualities that
impress you (intelligence, understanding, insightfulness, speed, commitment, ability to work
independently, technical skills, communication skills, teamwork and personality, etc.). Minimize
general praise of the candidate’s generic qualities (e.g. “the candidate is a highly motivated and
hardworking”) in favor of qualities that make the applicant truly exceptional even among other
highly motivated and hard-working peers. Be sure to avoid implicit bias in your selection of
terms. Explain why the candidate will excel in her/his selected UK graduate program. If you have
specific knowledge of this field, explain why the UK fit is a particularly good choice for this
candidate.
Future Leadership Potential and Commitment to the Good of Others
State the likelihood that this candidate will make significant contributions to her/his chosen field.
Tell stories that emphasize the candidate’s initiative, creativity and insight, problem-solving,
ability to create shared vision, management of workflow and deadlines, management of team
members, self-awareness and promotion of diversity, resilience, and ability to deliver results.
Talk about the candidate’s motivations, especially as these relate to service to others or the
public good. Is the candidate driven by a particular cause, problem, or commitment to work with
those who are disadvantaged or disenfranchised? What specific examples have you observed of
these motivations in your interactions with the candidate? Once you’ve established based on
past experience that the candidate possesses these traits, project them into the future. Where
does the candidate’s trajectory lead in 10 or 20 years?
Explicit Comparisons
One effective way of supporting these claims is by comparing the student favorably to other
students, interns, employees, or peers you know who have also gone on to make significant
contributions in the same field. Because letters of recommendation are inherently evaluative, at
some point - typically in the first or final paragraphs - you should be explicit about the scale
against which you are comparing the applicant. Obviously, you will want to select the best scale
against which you can favorably compare the applicant with integrity (e.g. “The best
undergraduate in our department,” “One of the best students I've encountered in 20 years of
teaching at U-M [and other peer institutions],” “Compares favorably with previous Marshall [or
comparable scholarships] recipients for whom I've written letters.”)
Submission Instructions
Your letter should be submitted via the Marshall application platform in Embark no later
than the first Monday of August. You should receive an automated email inviting you
to upload the letter when the candidate enters you into the online application. Your letter
will be treated as confidential and will not be released to the student without your
permission. If the committee has any suggestions for changes to the letter it is possible
to un-submit it for future editing.
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