Requesting a Letter of Recommendation or Reference

If you completed a course under me (or, in the worst-case scenario, multiple! :)) or worked under my supervision as a Lab Instructor, Teaching Assistant, researcher, or engineer, and need a Letter of Recommendation (LOR) or professional reference for graduate school, a job, scholarship, or another opportunity, please read the following before contacting me.

Requesting a Recommendation

1. Recommendation letters are not limited to students from North South University (NSU), Dhaka, Bangladesh. If you have studied or worked under my supervision at any institution or organization, you are welcome to request an LOR or professional reference.

2. Please contact me and obtain my consent before listing me as a referee. Do not enter my information into an application system before I have confirmed that I can provide a recommendation.

   Recommendation requests should be sent to my current official email address at NSU, with the other two addresses copied:

   Email: shaikh.shimon@northsouth.edu
   CC: ssarefin@uwaterloo.ca, skshimon@alumni.colostate.edu

3. Please ask early. Providing (or not providing) an LOR is at the referee’s discretion and depends on several factors, including how well I know your work and whether I can provide a sufficiently strong and meaningful recommendation. A weak recommendation can be worse than having no recommendation at all.

4. If you contact me beforehand with sufficient information, I can let you know whether I am able to act as your referee for the particular application.

5. When requesting an LOR, please provide the following information, where applicable:

   • Courses, semesters, and sections completed under my supervision
   • Your complete transcript/grade sheet
   • Your current CV or résumé
   • GitHub repository links for projects completed under my supervision
   • A brief description of the program, position, scholarship, or other opportunity
   • Application and recommendation submission deadlines
   • Any specific submission instructions
   • Any additional information that may help me write a specific and useful recommendation

Graduate School Applications

1. If you are planning to apply to graduate school, start preparing well in advance. Depending on the programs you are targeting, preparation may include standardized tests, English-language proficiency requirements, identifying universities and potential supervisors, preparing your statement of purpose and CV, and arranging recommendation letters.

2. Please contact me about a potential recommendation well before your first application deadline. Recommendation requests tend to arrive in clusters during graduate admission seasons, and I may not be able to accommodate last-minute requests.

3. When possible, I prefer to write customized recommendations for the individual programs or opportunities for which I have agreed to recommend you. If you provide your records and intended list of programs sufficiently early, I can prepare the necessary materials ahead of the application season.

Email and Communication

1. If you are a current NSU student, please follow the applicable student email policies when contacting me.

2. If you are an NSU alumnus/alumna and no longer have access to your NSU email account, or if you worked with me outside NSU, please use an institutional or professional email address when possible. In your message, briefly remind me when, where, and in what capacity we worked together.

If you are unsure whether I would be an appropriate referee for a particular application, please feel free to ask. It is always better to discuss this with me beforehand than to list me as a referee without prior confirmation.