How Can I Ever Thank You?

Journal of College Admission, Spring 2007 by Hopewell, Brian R

A student called me up this fall to ask in the usual charming and breathless way if I'd write a recommendation letter-four of them actually-and mail them quickly, i.e. by the end of the week. It being Wednesday p.m. when the call came in, you can understand the charming and breathless quality of the call. Regardless, I did as I was bidden, as the opportunity sought was genuine and the student deserving. When I reported on Friday that the deed had been done, there was a longish pause, and then, The Question: "How can I ever thank you?"

Repayment of such a debt is an interesting issue, one that I've pondered for many years, reaching back to my own undergraduate need for third-party testimonials. I recall being taken aside by the husband of my college's founder-and-president during my senior year quest for admission to graduate school. He was a retired Harvard Law School Dean and an eminent professor of constitutional law-a very imposing fellow, tall, white-maned, bolo-tied, and missing a few bits of finger from boyhood wood-shop accidents. We found ourselves standing together at a holiday reception. I didn't think he knew who I was, but he surprised me, after our introduction by a faculty member, by remembering that I'd sent he and his wife, the president, a Christmas card the year before when I was doing a junior-year-abroad in Scotland. These people must get thousands of Christmas cards, I thought, and he remembered mine from a year ago? I took my hands out of my pockets and stood up straight, maybe for the first time all term, as we talked.

He asked me what I was going to do after graduation. I said I was applying to graduate school. Would I be applying to Harvard, he queried? Another curveball. I'm a first-generation college student and had always considered my admission to this private, rural and otherwise wonderful college akin to winning the Irish sweepstakes. Harvard of course had a spectacular department in the field I was hoping to join, and I had, in fact, a Harvard application crushed somewhere in the humid recesses of my backpack. It had been there for months, and would likely have stayed there for months longer. I thought of myself as lucky, but not Harvard-lucky.

Still, sensing an opportunity about to knock, I said, "Yes. Yes I am." He said, "Good! Why don't you bring your applications over to the house tomorrow morning?" So, having restored the Harvard materials to something like flatness, off I went to the presidential manse the next morning. My new patron asked me questions about why I wanted to get a graduate degree. I don't recall how I fielded that one, but I probably let on that I was unfit for commerce and lacked the resources for a life of leisure. That seemed to make sense to him, so he asked if I'd object to his writing to the chosen schools on my behalf. I was stunned. I mumbled a protest. He waved it aside, and said he'd have his letters ready the following morning.

I went back the next day, had a cup of coffee and a warm muffin, and received an envelope containing seven hand-written letters of recommendation. When I asked what I could ever do to repay his kindness, he said, "Young man, you may be in this business a long time, as I have been. In that time I've learned that there is only one thing I can do to repay the enormous debt I owe to those men and women who've made my education possible, and that is to transfer the debt to the next generation in the hope that they will do the same, and in that way to guarantee that the bonds of trust and gratitude compound over time." Our interview concluded, he sent me on my way with good wishes and another muffin.

Harvard, alas, had no room for me that year, but I learned later that the hand-written letter in my file clinched acceptance to the University of Washington, where I enrolled the next fall, which I duly reported in my Christmas card that year.

It's likely that a few years down the road, the students who ask us for (and about) letters are going to be writing them for others, as they should. The advice I want them to remember is to write them as well-and as quickly-as they can. Let those bonds of trust and gratitude compound over time.

"I'm a first-generation college student and had always considered my admission to this private, rural and otherwise wonderful college akin to winning the Irish sweepstakes."

BRIAN R. HOPEWELL is a certified educational planner living on Cape Cod, where he's writing a guidebook to America's coastal colleges.