I am happy to serve as a reference for students I have taught. However, as my time is not unlimited, I do need to put some restrictions on the letters I am willing to write and send. This page is primarily about letters of reference for graduate school, although most of the same rules and logistics would apply for other reasons (such as scholarship applications).
It is my goal to be able to serve as a reference for as many students as I reasonably can, given my constraints during the typical time that graduate school letters are needed (late Fall quarter).
If you are or were a UCI student, and we are exchanging email about letters of recommendation, I would prefer that all written communication come from your UCI email address. If you use an alternate email, please explain why you are doing so. Regardless, please send all communication from the same address if at all possible. If the content of the letter relates to your work as a student elsewhere, using that university's email address will be helpful to me too (again, unless there is a good reason for you to not do so).
- Am I a good reference for you? Keep in mind that most of the time when you're asking for a letter of recommendation, the recipient isn't only asking me a binary question of whether or not I recommend you. They are also asking why I give such a recommendation, and to support it. If all I can say about you is that you earned a good grade in one of my classes, especially if that course is lower division, that isn't going to be viewed by them as a strong positive reference. You are sending them a transcript -- they already know you earned a good grade in that class. If you stood out in other ways, such as by regularly helping with good answers on the course message board, please remind me of that.
- Where are you applying?
- For graduate school, please have a focused list of where you are asking me to send a reference letter. Each school you apply to takes time from each of your recommenders; please be respectful of that.
- You also hopefully have plans for graduate school and an assessment of both where you are likely to be accepted and where you are likely to attend if you are accepted. CSUN and Harvard are both wonderful universities, but a focused application list probably shouldn't include both.
- For most students, I am going to limit the number of letters I will send for graduate school to five. If you want me to send a letter on your behalf to more than five graduate school applications, you will need to discuss this with me before listing me.
- When are you applying? For me to be able to write a letter for you, you will need to give me plenty of lead time. For students who are applying for a Fall 2026 admission with a December/January letter writer deadline, you will need to alert me by the end of October 2025. Details for how to do so appear later on this page.
- Why do I ask for this? While writing any particular letter isn't a large time commitment, the total time is. In the 2024-25 school year, I wrote letters for 67 different students and sent them to around 300 schools (total letters sent, not for each student).
- When you ask for a reference, I will ask for the following details; I will ask for some before I agree and some afterward.
- Which class(es) did you take with me? Which quarter(s) were they? How well did you do?
- How else have we interacted?
- Where are you applying? Which programs within, and to which degree objectives? Are you applying for a Masters Degree or a Ph.D.?
- When is the first deadline for me to submit a letter?
What to Prepare
Students who I am going to send a letter on behalf of should have the following prepared:
- Please plan to be able to have every application for which I will be sending a reference letter filled out by mid-November (for December/January deadlines) or at least three weeks prior to the first letter writer's deadline for other schools. Furthermore, any December/January deadline application not completed by mid-November will likely result in letters not being sent until late December. Please be aware of this if you are applying to a school with a December 15 deadline.
- You should have a list of (school, program, deadline) [with at most 5 entries]. Ideally, you will be able to send this to me shortly after I tell you that I will be writing a reference letter for you. If you change your mind about where you are applying, you will need to send me an updated list. I cannot guarantee I will be able to meet the changes, especially if a school with a later deadline is replaced by one with an earlier deadline.
My information
When you apply somewhere that is going to ask you for a faculty reference, they will ask for my information. Please provide accurate information when doing so.
- My name: Michael Shindler.
- Please note the spelling.
- My email: Please use mikes at uci dot edu.
- I also have one at ics dot uci. Please do not use that one for letters of reference.
- I try (somewhat unsuccessfully) to use that one primarily for class related email with my at-uci email for all other professional purposes.
- Title: My job title is "Associate Professor of Teaching"
- Please use the full title and not "Associate Professor" or "Professor."
- Phone number and mailing address. I do not have a phone in my office, other than my personal cell phone. If an application asks for my phone (or fax) number, please use the department (not individual!) address, phone, and fax numbers listed on the Computer Science Department's Contact Us page.
- Relationship to applicant -- for most students, this will be instructor/student. If you were also a member of my course staff, or research group, or were very active in a club I advise, that may be relevant also. However, I suggest avoiding too much detail here -- most people outside of UCI won't know what "ICS 46" is, as the similar course is referenced differently elsewhere. Don't be too nervous on this one -- I think it's primarily for context about the reference letter, and every one I have ever written for a student (and most that I have read written by other professors, here and elsewhere) explains that early in the letter anyway.
If you do not list this information correctly in an application, and it is a university or program where I know you had the option to do so when filling it out, I will not input this on your behalf. Some schools will not accept a reference without this, and I will not have the bandwidth to alert you that this happened; I will have to go to the next reference to send. Be sure to have the information listed as above and spelled correctly.
What You Should Not Do
I am listing this because I don't know when students would hear that these aren't things they should do, and as such, are sometimes "unspoken requirements." That leads to some people knowing about them and others not knowing.
- Typically, do not offer to help write the letter for your recommenders. If they ask for assistance, that's one thing; I have never done that. In fact, some programs require that the recommender certify that the student did not aid in writing the reference.
- You should never list someone as a reference without clearing this with them first.
- Unless requested, you typically shouldn't send reminder emails about the reference letters or ask the university to re-send the requests. If I have told you I'll send a letter for you, and I have the list of universities who expect such a letter, I will let you know if I can't find one form. Sending multiple requests actually makes this harder for your recommenders.
How to Ask
Even if we have discussed this in person, or through email, or in any other way, please fill out this form. If you are a UCI student, please log into your UCI Google Account prior to filling this out. In addition to keeping all the information in one place, this also means I won't miss emails making the request, something that has happened a few times in the past that I know about.
Even if we haven't discussed me writing a reference for you, please fill this out if you would like me to do so. You don't need to contact me otherwise (although feel free to mention it if you see me); I'll look at the set of requests in late October and will alert people who I can write for shortly thereafter.