Requesting Recommendations and References from Prof. Sergi

(NOTE: This page only applies to requests from students who have taken undergraduate courses with me; graduate students should contact me directly by email.)

I am happy to write a recommendation letter, or to act as a reference otherwise, for any current or former undergraduate student whom I can recommend strongly and without hesitation. Know that as a matter of policy, I will only recommend an undergraduate student based on the work that student has already done within my classes. That means I cannot consult extra work you’ve done since then and I cannot review work that has already been graded by one of my TAs. Also, I will only commit to a recommendation based on work already completed and graded, not on the promise of work to come; if the work I require will occur closer to your deadline than I allow in my rules below, then I will not be able to agree to be your recommender.

(For students who have only taken classes with me in which TAs have done the grading, I recommend either asking a prof who has interacted more directly with your work or asking your TA to write a co-signed letter with me — the TA, if they agree, will write the bulk of the letter first, then I’ll flesh it out with comments based on my direct interactions with you in class. For a co-signed letter, you still have to satisfy the minimum grade requirements specified below.)

Depending on the nature of your request, I may require that you send me an official request document (composed according to some very specific instructions and within a set timeline) that gathers together the necessary information and that shows you satisfy the requirements that I have laid out below. Consult the list of options in the expandable list below, click on the option that most closely matches your request, and then follow (thoroughly and carefully) the instructions that I have provided. Remember, if you need a full breakdown of your course grade for any of my classes, all you have to do is email me to request it (please put that breakdown request in a separate email from any recommendation or reference requests).

Know too that the first and foremost purpose of any recommendation or reference, as far as I understand it, is as a reflection on the character, conduct, and maturity of the applicant. I take that purpose seriously: while I will only consult the work you have done in my classes, I am also honour-bound to reflect comprehensively, in my recommendation, on your behaviour in any and all of your interactions with me thus far. Importantly, concerns regarding the applicant’s character, conduct, and maturity are a major reason why applicants are generally barred from reading letters written about them: since I am being asked by an institution or employer for my frank, direct assessment of an applicant’s character, it would be deeply unfair for the institution or employer to put me repeatedly in positions in which I must communicate such a personal assessment (especially in cases where that assessment is at all negative) directly to the applicant! The subject of your character, conduct, and maturity, then, is not one I will be willing to discuss with you directly (do not ask); instead, a good rule of thumb in the first place is to behave in all student-professor interactions (however informal!) in a way that exhibits respect, dignity, adulthood, and sense. If you have not done so in past interactions with me, then I may not be the right recommender for you — and since I cannot speak directly with you about the subject, you must determine on your own whether you have done so.

If I’ve already written you a letter, it’s quite easy for me to re-submit that letter (with tweaks if necessary) to as many other recipients as you like. There is no need to re-submit an official request if I already have a letter on file for you. Do ask me well in advance to ensure that I do indeed still have your letter on file (I probably do, but accidents happen); that said, I may also be able to re-submit letters on short notice, so if you’re on a tight schedule, email me anyway.
If you are a current or former student of mine who would like to list my contact information as one of your references for an application, thus making myself available for a brief phone or email exchange in support of an application — I’m happy to oblige, as long as you have earned (or are earning) an Engagement and Participation grade of 76 or higher in one of my classes.
Just contact me by email at sergi.utoronto@gmail.com to ask me to be your reference; do not list me as your reference until I agree, of course.
If you aren’t sure about your Engagement and Participation grade, contact me at sergi.utoronto@gmail.com for a grade breakdown.
[IMPORTANT: These instructions are only for requests for references that do not require me to write a letter (and that do not require me to write descriptively or at length, as I would in a letter, into online forms). For those requests, see other categories below.]
If you are a current or former student of mine who would like me to fill out a brief online form and to provide my contact information, I’m happy to oblige, as long as you have earned (or are earning) an Engagement and Participation grade of 76 or higher in one of my classes.
Just contact me by email at sergi.utoronto@gmail.com to ask me to be your reference; do not list me as your reference until I agree, of course.
If you aren’t sure about your Engagement and Participation grade, contact me at sergi.utoronto@gmail.com for a grade breakdown.
If you need me to write you a recommendation/reference letter for admission to a graduate program, or in application for a scholarship or award, in the humanities, you must satisfy a baseline set of criteria that ensure I can write you a strong letter:

(I)a course grade of 83 or higher in one course I’ve taught — or, if you’ve taken more than one of my courses, then a course grade of 80 or higher in at least one of them (if you are a current student of mine, but have not yet completed the full course and received a grade, then I cannot yet write you a recommendation letter for further study in the humanities — the earliest I can write for a student is one month after a course grade has been assigned);
(II) an engagement/participation grade of 80 or higher in at least one course of mine;
(III) an 82 or higher on at least one essay that I have graded for you (TA-graded essays do not count);
(IV) there must be at least one month’s notice between the time you request the letter from me and the time it is due (I will not, under any circumstances, write a new recommendation letter without one month’s advance notice!).
I also require you to do some administrative work in advance. Read and follow these instructions carefully:
1. Confirm that you satisfy all four requirements that I’ve listed above. If you don’t already have full numerical breakdowns for the courses you’ve taken with me, email me at sergi.utoronto@gmail.com to request grade breakdowns right away — be sure to put the course title, year, and term in your request. (Do not request grade breakdowns and a rec letter in the same email: rather, request the grade breakdowns first, then confirm that you satisfy the requirements, and then, if you do satisfy them, email me again to request the letter).
2. Once you are confident that you can satisfy all the requirements, email me at sergi.utoronto@gmail.com to confirm my availability before you begin preparing your request — again, make sure this initial email comes to me no less than one month before the earliest deadline.
3. Find your current university transcript, in which all course grades are clearly marked; you’ll need to send me a copy along with your request (a screenshot is fine).
4. Open up a new document on your computer: we’ll call this the request document.
5. Type into your request document, under the heading LETTERS REQUESTED, a numbered list of each recipient to whom you’d like me to send a letter. Please specify the salutation you would like me to use (i.e. “Dear Admissions Committee,” “Dear Professor Plum,” “To Whom It May Concern,” etc.) for each letter — if you know actual names for the recipients it’s best, but not necessary. You can always add further recipients later, but list all of the recipients you know of now.
6. Investigate, as thoroughly as possible, what each recipient will be asking me to do as part of my recommendation for you. Will I be asked simply to upload a letter as a separate file, or will I have to fill in a text box, or multiple boxes — if text boxes are used, will there be any word limits or character limits? Will there be a questionnaire attached to the submission? You can find out the answers to these questions either through the recipient’s website or by contacting the recipient by phone or email (“one of my recommenders would like to know ahead of time what is involved in the submission of the letter — is it just a matter of uploading a file, or are there additional forms?”). Notate, next to each letter recipient you’ve listed, basic information about what I’ll be asked to do when I submit. ‍ ‍
7. On your end, be sure to fully fill out any identifying information about me that the recipient asks you to supply. Give them my name, my position/title (I am an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto), and my official utor email address (the one listed at my official faculty page, here). If they ask for a phone number for me, type “email preferred”; if that doesn’t work, give them the Department of English phone number at (416) 978-3190. Should they request a postal address, use 170 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5R 2M8.
8. Okay, back to your request document: type into your document, under the heading COURSES TAKEN, a numbered list of each course you took with me, alongside the date of each course, the grade I gave you in each course, and the engagement/participation grade you received in each course. (Again, if you’re not sure what your engagement/participation grade was for a course, email me for a grade breakdown). Remember, you must have received an 80 or higher for engagement/participation in at least one course of mine in order for me to write a recommendation letter for you in the advanced humanities.
9. Add a new heading to your request document: ESSAYS WRITTEN. Here, brieflyidentify allargumentative, thesis-based essays that you have written and submitted to me directly (not to a TA), along with the grade you received on each essay. Include every essay, even if some scored low. If you can, please identify the essays by title and/or thesis statement; at the very least, you must include numerical grades for each (which you should have already secured at Step 1, above). Remember, you must have taken at least one course with me in which I (not a TA) read and graded an essay you wrote, and assigned that essay a score of 82 or higher. (If you have only taken courses with me in which TAs have graded your written work, then approach the TA to write for you first; I may be able to co-sign on a letter that your TA writes).
10. If all of the classes you took with me were in 2020 or later, you can skip this step. If any of the classes you took with me happened before 2020, then please try to search out any assignments you submitted, preferably with my comments still attached to them (if you have an audio recording of an essay meeting, send that), and send them to me as attachments along with your request document and transcript. If you are missing any pre-2020 documents, that’s fine — I can likely still write for you (and I likely still have most of your documents on file myself) but my letter may be missing some important information.
11. You’re all set! Contact me by email now, and attach to that email your request document, along with your transcript (and assignments any course earlier than 2020).
IMPORTANT: You’re currently looking at instructions for applications outside of the humanities; if you are requesting a rec letter for a field in the humanities, look at the humanities-specific instructions and requirements above.
If you need me to write you a recommendation/reference letter for admission to a graduate program, or in application for a scholarship or award (outside the humanities), you must satisfy a baseline set of criteria that ensure I can write you a strong letter:
(I) a course grade of 80 or higher in one course I’ve taught (if you are a current student of mine, but have not yet completed the full course and received a grade, then I cannot yet write you a recommendation letter for further study in the humanities — the earliest I can write for a student is one month after a course grade has been assigned);
(II) an engagement/participation grade of 80 or higher in at least one course of mine;
(III) a 78 or higher on at least one essay that I have graded for you (TA-graded essays do not count);
(IV) there must be at least one month’s notice between the time you request the letter from me and the time it is due (I will not, under any circumstances, write a new recommendation letter without one month’s advance notice!).
I also require you to do some administrative work in advance. Read and follow these instructions carefully:
1. Confirm that you satisfy all four requirements that I’ve listed above. If you don’t already have full numerical breakdowns for the courses you’ve taken with me, email me at sergi.utoronto@gmail.com to request grade breakdowns right away — be sure to put the course title, year, and term in your request. (Do not request grade breakdowns and a rec letter in the same email: rather, request the grade breakdowns first, then confirm that you satisfy the requirements, and then, if you do satisfy them, email me again to request the letter).
2. Once you are confident that you can satisfy all the requirements, email me at sergi.utoronto@gmail.com to confirm my availability before you begin preparing your request — again, make sure this initial email comes to me no less than one month before the earliest deadline.
3. Find your current university transcript, in which all course grades are clearly marked; you’ll need to send me a copy along with your request (a screenshot is fine).
4. Open up a new document on your computer: we’ll call this the request document.
5. Type into your request document, under the heading LETTERS REQUESTED, a numbered list of each recipient to whom you’d like me to send a letter, alongside the deadline for each recipient and the field or specialization of the program being applied to. Please specify the salutation you would like me to use (i.e. “Dear Admissions Committee,” “Dear Professor Plum,” “To Whom It May Concern,” etc.) for each letter — if you know actual names for the recipients it’s best, but not necessary. You can always add further recipients later, but list all of the recipients you know of now.
6. Investigate, as thoroughly as possible, what each recipient will be asking me to do as part of my recommendation for you. Will I be asked simply to upload a letter as a separate file, or will I have to fill in a text box, or multiple boxes — if text boxes are used, will there be any word limits or character limits? Will there be a questionnaire attached to the submission? You can find out the answers to these questions either through the recipient’s website or by contacting the recipient by phone or email (“one of my recommenders would like to know ahead of time what is involved in the submission of the letter — is it just a matter of uploading a file, or are there additional forms?”). Notate, next to each letter recipient you’ve listed, basic information about what I’ll be asked to do when I submit.
7. On your end, be sure to fully fill out any identifying information about me that the recipient asks you to supply. Give them my name, my position/title (I am an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto), and my official utor email address (the one listed at my official faculty page, here). If they ask for a phone number for me, type “email preferred”; if that doesn’t work, give them the Department of English phone number at (416) 978-3190. Should they request a postal address, use 170 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5R 2M8.
8. Okay, back to your request document: type into your document, under the heading COURSES TAKEN, a numbered list of each course you took with me, alongside the date of each course, the grade I gave you in each course, and the engagement/participation grade you received in each course. (Again, if you’re not sure what your engagement/participation grade was for a course, email me for a grade breakdown.) Remember, you must have received an 80 or higher for engagement/participation in at least one course of mine in order for me to write a recommendation letter for you.
9. Add a new heading to your request document: ESSAYS WRITTEN. Here, briefly identify allargumentative, thesis-based essays that you have written and submitted to me directly (not to a TA), along with the grade you received on each essay. Include every essay, even if some scored low. If you can, please identify the essays by title and/or thesis statement; at the very least, you must include numerical grades for each (which you should already have secured at Step 1, above). Remember, you must have taken at least one course with me in which I (not a TA) read and graded an essay you wrote, and assigned that essay a score of 78 or higher.‍ ‍(If you have only taken courses with me in which TAs have graded your written work, then approach the TA to write for you first; I may be able to co-sign on a letter that your TA writes).‍ ‍
10. If all of the classes you took with me were in 2020 or later, you can skip this step. If any of the classes you took with me happened before 2020, then please try to search out any assignments you submitted, preferably with my comments still attached to them (if you have an audio recording of an essay meeting, send that), and send them to me as attachments along with your request document and transcript. If you are missing any pre-2020 documents, that’s fine — I can likely still write for you (and I likely still have most of your documents on file myself) but my letter may be missing some important information.
11. You’re all set! Contact me by email now, and attach to that email your request document, along with your transcript (and assignments any course earlier than 2020).
If you need a letter of recommendation from me in application for a non-academic position or non-academic employment, or for a transfer to a different college or university, I’m happy to oblige, as long as you request the letter no less than one month before the deadline. You must satisfy two criteria that ensure I can write you a strong letter:

(I) a course grade of 78 or higher in one course I’ve taught;
(II) an 80 or higher for engagement/participation in at least one course of mine. (If you are a current student of mine, but have not yet completed the full course and received a grade, you’ll at least need to have received a grade of 78 or higher on an assignment of some kind.)

I also require you to do some administrative work in advance. Read and follow these instructions carefully:
1. Confirm that you satisfy both requirements that I’ve listed above. If you don’t already have full numerical breakdowns for the courses you’ve taken (or are currently taking) with me, email me at sergi.utoronto@gmail.com to request grade breakdowns right away — be sure to put the course title, year, and term in your request. (Do not request grade breakdowns and a rec letter in the same email: rather, request the grade breakdowns first, then confirm that you satisfy the requirements, and then, if you do satisfy them, email me again to request the letter).
2. Once you are confident that you can satisfy all the requirements, email me at sergi.utoronto@gmail.com to confirm my availability before you begin preparing your request — again, make sure this initial email comes to me no less than one month before the earliest deadline.
3. Find your current university transcript, in which all course grades are clearly marked; you’ll need to send me a copy along with your request (a screenshot is fine).
4. Type into an email, under the heading LETTERS REQUESTED, a numbered list of each recipient to whom you’d like me to send a letter, alongside the deadline for each recipient. Please specify the salutation you would like me to use (i.e. “Dear Admissions Committee,” “Dear Professor Plum,” “To Whom It May Concern,” etc.) for each letter — if you know actual names for the recipients it’s best, but not necessary. You can always add further recipients later, but list all of the recipients you know of now.
5. Investigate, as thoroughly as possible, what each recipient will be asking me to do as part of my recommendation for you. Will I be asked simply to upload a letter as a separate file, or will I have to fill in a text box, or multiple boxes — if text boxes are used, will there be any word limits or character limits? Will there be a questionnaire attached to the submission? You can find out the answers to these questions either through the recipient’s website or by contacting the recipient by phone or email (“one of my recommenders would like to know ahead of time what is involved in the submission of the letter — is it just a matter of uploading a file, or are there additional forms?”). Notate, next to each letter recipient you’ve listed, basic information about what I’ll be asked to do when I submit.
6. On your end, be sure to fully fill out any identifying information about me that the recipient asks you to supply. Give them my name, my position/title (I am an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto), and my official utor email address (the one listed at my official faculty page, here). If they ask for a phone number for me, type “email preferred”; if that doesn’t work, give them the Department of English phone number at (416) 978-3190.
7. In the email you’re writing to me, under the heading COURSES TAKEN, type a numbered list of each course you took with me, alongside the date of each course, the grade I gave you in each course, and the engagement/participation grade you received (or are receiving) in each course (you should already have identified all these grades at Step 1, above). Remember, you must have received a 80 or higher for engagement/participation in at least one course of mine in order for me to write a recommendation letter for you.‍ ‍
8. If all of the classes you took with me were in 2020 or later, you can skip this step. If any of the classes you took with me happened before 2020, then you’ll need to search out any assignments you submitted, preferably with my comments still attached to them (if you have an audio recording of an essay meeting, send that), and send them to me as attachments along with your transcript. If you are missing any pre-2020 documents, that’s fine — I can likely still write for you (and I likely still have most of your documents on file myself) but my letter may be missing some important information.
9. You’re all set! Send the email (which should now include LETTERS REQUESTED and COURSES TAKEN) to sergi.utoronto@gmail.com, and be sure to attach your transcript (and any documents from before 2020).
The prep work I’ve asked you to do on this page is equivalent to what I’d be asked to do in writing for you — but unlike me, you’ve already got most of the necessary materials handy, since you’re applying for whatever you’re applying for already anyway.
Also, you’ve only got to gather the necessary data for yourself — while I get asked to write quite a few recommendation letters every semester.
It just makes sense for the applicant, rather than the recommender, to handle the necessary admin for the application.
Please do not!
Once in a while, students will buy me a gift or something to show their appreciation for a rec I’ve written. I require no such things, as I am just doing my job here, and gifts like that can feel a bit too quid pro quo for me.
If you still feel obligated to give something, then please make a donation toward a scholarly organization (perhaps this one). Don’t attach my name to the donation (!), but do let me know where you gave — it’ll brighten my day.

Requesting Recommendations and References from Prof. Sergi

I would like Prof. Sergi to re-submit (with tweaks if necessary) a letter he has already written and submitted for me elsewhere.

I would like to list Prof. Sergi as my reference, including his contact information, but I do not need him to write (or otherwise prepare) anything at all.

I would like to list Prof. Sergi as my reference, for which he'll be required to provide his contact information and to fill out a very short online form, but with no letter or descriptive writing required.

I would like Prof. Sergi to write a recommendation letter for my application to a graduate program, or for a scholarship or award, in the humanities (including literature, history, medieval studies, performance studies, etc).

I would like Prof. Sergi to write a recommendation/reference letter for my application to a graduate program, or for a scholarship or award, in a field outside the humanities (including medicine, law, education, and training/practical/conservatory programs in the arts).

I would like Prof. Sergi to write me a recommendation or reference letter for a non-academic position or non-academic employment, or for a transfer to a different college or university.

Why do I have to do all this prep work in order to get you to write me a letter?

May I buy Prof. Sergi a gift as thanks for a recommendation or reference?