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I am a young faculty member and have recently started hiring for my first PhD vacancy. Among my pool of applicants, there was one candidate whose recommendation letter stood out. Allegedly written by a professor at a university in an English-speaking country, who taught a course this student took, this letter included what I would deem excessive praise ("...of all my students, I would rank [student] as the best in terms of creativity, hard work, and breadth." [sic] and "I believe [student] would be one of the most promising students in your university.") and flawed English ("[Student] has very ambitious pretentious [sic] in his field"), which I would not expect from faculty in an English-speaking country. The praise also doesn't align with the grades the student submitted, which indicated that they had to re-take about half of their courses and graduated with a barely passing grade.

Taken together, these factors make me suspicious that the recommendation letter may have been manipulated. However, the recommendation letter was also not written for my vacancy but apparently a prior application to an international M.Sc. programme, and the alleged author and the student both hail from the same non-English-speaking country.

Now my question: Should I inform the alleged author of my doubts regarding the authenticity of the recommendation letter? On the one hand, I myself would like to know if a student ever were to impersonate me in such a manner. On the other hand, voicing my suspicions could be an affront if the recommendation letter is indeed genuine.

Edit / Follow-up: Following the recommendations, I have reached out to the alleged author to confirm the authenticity of the recommendation letter without voicing specific concerns. The professor responded that they "did not approve the letter", which suggests that it was indeed a forgery.

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    The fact that the university is in an English speaking country does not mean that it's personel are all native English speakers. Have you checked that? Probably the easiest way is to go to their website, look at the CV and look at where they did their undergraduate. That is not perfect, but does give a first indication.
    – Maarten Buis
    Commented Aug 2 at 7:10
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    Presumably you have received the letter from the student, rather than directly from its (purported) author. Perhaps you can email the author a copy of the letter and ask them to confirm its authenticity, without needing to particularise your doubts.
    – avid
    Commented Aug 2 at 7:16
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    For the future, consider switching to a system that requires "blind" submission of recommendation letters, directly from the professors' academic e-mail addresses and without the students seeing them.
    – Federico Poloni
    Commented Aug 2 at 7:30
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    "Excessive praise" is a bit of a tradition in recommendation letters in places like the US and I wouldn't use that as a criterion for suspicion. In my experience people find it both ridiculous and also feel compelled to follow suit when they want the person they recommend to be successful.
    – Bryan Krause ♦
    Commented Aug 2 at 12:36
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    The praise also doesn't align with the grades the student submitted, which indicated that they had to re-take about half of their courses and graduated with a barely passing grade. -- My suspicions would be VERY HIGH if a letter of recommendation highly praising the student did not address this apparent mismatch. For example (U.S. based, math), if such a letter were written for a student with a sub-3.0 GPA in their math courses, I would expect to see mentioned things like top 30 Putnam exam score, took many graduate level classes and outperformed graduate students (continued)
    – Dave L Renfro
    Commented Aug 2 at 14:27

8 Answers 8

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When I receive a recommendation letter via the student, my policy is to email it to the alleged writer at their institutional address with a note saying, “[Student’s name] has applied for a position with me and has provided the attached letter from you. Can you confirm your comments and do you have anything you’d like to add? If you’d prefer to discuss this via videoconference, please let me know and we will find a suitable time.”

That way, I am not accusing the student of any wrong-doing, but I am making sure that it will come to light if the letter is not legitimate or if the writer simply did not feel free to give an honest reference, given that the student would see it.

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I do not think that there is anything wrong with asking the faculty member whether (s)he wrote this letter. It is becoming common to be asked to verify recommendation letters.

Since you are committing quite a number of resources, it is also possible to ask the letter writer whether they are willing to talk to you on the phone (i.e. Skype, zoom, Google meet, ...) at a day and a time of their convenience. You might have to get up in the middle of the night, though.

I would not bring up the discrepancy between the transcripts and the letter, at least not at first.

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I am not sure whether investigating this matter is worth your time.

Generally, if you do not know anything about the author of a recommendation letter, the recommendation does not help you very much in determining a future PhD student. So you can mainly look at the grades (which seem to be bad) and your personal impression of the student.

Having a mediocre or bad PhD student can be very time-consuming and frustrating.

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Here's the key thing:

The praise also doesn't align with the grades the student submitted, which indicated that they had to re-take about half of their courses and graduated with a barely passing grade.

Why would you even consider such an applicant when there are so many talented graduates eager to join a PhD program? You need a dedicated and well-organized PhD student, not someone whose traits allow graduating only with a barely passing grade.

And if you are not hiring this applicant, it doesn't matter whether the recommendation letter is manipulated or not. While it might be tempting to address a perceived wrongdoing, it's wiser to focus on your own success.

The likely truth regarding the recommendation letter is this: the student asked the professor for a recommendation, the professor requested a draft, and the student provided it. The professor then signed it with minimal or no changes. This practice is relatively common in some countries.

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None of the othe answers seem to address the "recommender's" perspective, but if it were me who purportedly wrote the letter, I would certainly appreciate a heads up that there was a possibility that a potential forger might be doing something that might be of harm to my reputation.

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I think there should be a presumption of innocence until you confirm whether this letter of recommendation has been manipulated by contacting the author of the letter in question. The reason is simple: if there is even a 0.0001% chance that this letter is authentic, the student in question should be treated fairly until this is confirmed.

Moreover, in some countries, people may tend to overpraise their students when writing letters of recommendation. As far as I understand, the professor did not mention anything related to the student's grades. Additionally, it is not unusual to encounter cases where a student's motivation or hard work is not always reflected in their grades.

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    I disagree with this answer. The question author is a new faculty member who is likely to be highly resource constrained. Their success or failure in academia depends substantially on the trajectory of their early trainees. Recommendation letters, in my experience, rarely express overt criticism. Therefore, to protect themselves, the question author is wise to question any discrepancy they find.
    – Ian
    Commented Aug 2 at 16:54
  • @Ian What's the disagreement about? It merely says that the student needs to be treated fairly. The reference can be enthusiastic and an honest reference by the referee even if the student isn't good, that's why references (good, but sometimes bad) are quite weak indicators, unless they come from someone whose judgement you have reason to trust.
    – Captain Emacs
    Commented Aug 2 at 18:32
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    @Ian so since he is a young scholar, he should immediately presume that the letter of recommendation is not authentic, without confirming it ? What cost ? What resource constraint ? It requires a simple a email (probably written in 10 min) to confirm it.
    – optimal control
    Commented Aug 2 at 21:41
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Both in deciding what to do with this letter and as part of considering all the other letters, I would start by asking yourself:

  • Would you have reacted the same way to the letter without the botched English?
  • Would you have even detected the likely forgery if not for the botched English?

If the answers are no, then in singling out this letter for informing the alleged author, you're potentially creating a situation where students for whom English is a second language get punished for this forgery while ones who write slick-sounding letters get by with it.

If the student is already not a good candidate, you might just want to leave this alone (they're not getting any advantage from it anyway) unless you're prepared to spend the effort to subject all letters to the same level of scrutiny. And in any case you may want to think about whether others are getting by with doing the same thing, and whether that's leading you to potentially pick unscrupulous and less-qualified candidates over more-qualified ones.

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If you only asked for reference contacts, and you got the letter unprompted, I would essentially treat it as if you hadn't received it. Even more so because it wasn't tailored to the position.

Then, if this student makes your first cut based on whatever other criteria you rank all other applicants on, you can always ask them whether this is the reference they want you to contact.

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