Letters of Recommendation
Overview of the Requirement
Our application requires a minimum of two letters of recommendation, although you can submit more if you would like. Recommendations should be provided by professors, employers, supervisors, or others who are able to comment on your academic achievements, research potential, and/or professional goals.
Letters of recommendation must be submitted directly by your recommender; any letter you upload to the application directly will be considered unofficial and will not fulfill the application requirement. After you list your references in your application, an email will be sent to the listed email addresses containing a link that they can use to upload your letter of recommendation directly to your application. If your recommenders are submitting their letters electronically, they must come from official email addresses and be on official letterhead.
For those applying as a Cyber Fellow
Applicants to the NYU Cybersecurity M.S. program who are also applying to be considered for the NYU Cyber Fellow scholarship benefit from a streamlined application process and are not required to submit letters of recommendation for their initial application review.
However, we still require you to provide the email addresses of two potential recommenders — professors, employers, supervisors, or other professional contacts who can comment on your academic achievements, research potential, and professional goals — in case our admissions committee determines that more information is needed before you can receive a decision. If more information is needed, our team will reach out to your recommenders at the provided emails to request they submit a letter of recommendation for you.
Your recommender does not have to have their letter of recommendation ready to go when you submit your application. However, we highly encourage you to let them know that you have listed them as a recommender and they may be contacted to submit a letter for you at a later time.
For all other applicants
Applicants to any other program or applicants to the Cybersecurity M.S. who are not interested in being considered for the Cyber Fellows scholarship are required to submit two Letters of Recommendation with their application. Recommendations should be provided by professors, employers, supervisors, or other professional contacts who are able to comment on your academic achievements, research potential and your professional goals (no friends or relatives please). You will need to list your reference's names and email addresses in your application. After doing so, they will receive an automated email containing a link where they can upload your letter of recommendation directly to your application.
We recommend that you notify your recommenders before listing them in your application so they are aware they will receive an email notification prompting them to submit their letter electronically. If your recommenders are having difficulty with the submission form, please contact us at tandon.digital.learning@nyu.edu so we can help troubleshoot!
Please note that recommendations MUST be on professional letterhead and come from the recommender's company or university email address. Recommendations received outside of these requirements will be subject to further review and asked to be resubmitted in order to meet our requirements.
Step by step process for submitting LOR
1. Identify how your letters will be delivered
In completing your application, you should have already listed two (or more) people on the online application system that you have asked to submit recommendations. Once you list them in your application, your recommenders will be sent a link via email to a portal that will allow them to upload their letter directly to your application.
To submit a Letter of Recommendation by mail, we ask that your recommender provide this document on letterhead, sealed and mailed to our application processing center at the following address:
NYU Tandon School of Engineering
Graduate Admissions Processing Center
458 Pike Road
Huntingdon Valley, PA 1900
This is the address of our document processing center in Pennsylvania. Please note: documents sent to this facility cannot be returned!
Recommendation Letters delivered by this method usually take a few weeks to be delivered, processed, and attached to your application.
2. Check in with your recommenders
We suggest that you notify your recommenders that the upload link has been sent to them and instruct them to check their spam folder if they have trouble locating the email. If your recommender is still unable to find it, you can resend the link or edit your recommenders via the online application checklist. If you have resent the link several times and your recommender is still unable to locate it, you can reach out to us at [email protected] for assistance.
3. If your letters of recommendation have not been attached after two weeks:
Once requested, it does take some time for your recommenders to upload their letters and for us to attach them to your application. However, if you are certain that your recommender submitted their letter two or more weeks ago and your application checklist has not been updated, you should again reach out to us directly at [email protected] so we can help you determine why there has been a delay in attaching your letters of recommendation.