Letters of Recommendation

NSF GRFP Reference Letter

For professors and research mentors reviewing an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship reference letter before it goes out - and for applicants asked to draft one for their recommender.

Reference letters for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program, written by a professor, PI, or research mentor - or drafted by the applicant at the recommender's request. Reviews the letter against the genre's defining ask: identifiable work for both of NSF's merit-review criteria (Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts), incidents of independent research, anchored peer comparisons, and an unhedged forward case. The application's other materials - the research plan, transcripts, the portal's letter ranking - are out of scope.

Scoring Dimensions

References