Referees

Have you been selected as a reference for a prospective student?

This page is designed to assist referees of prospective students applying to programs in the Department of Educational & Counselling Psychology.

Deadlines

Reference letters for Counselling Psychology: December 15. Reference letters for all other programs: January 15.

Process

• An email will be sent from McGill to the address specified by the applicant who has identified you as a prospective reference.
• The email will contain a link which enables you to upload a letter of refrence or decline the request.
• Counselling Psychology, Human Development, & School/Applied Child Psychology programs require special Letter of Reference forms. See "Forms" below. The Learning Sciences, Human Development, MEd Concentrations in Educational Psychology programs do not require a special Letter of Reference form. All letters must be saved in PDF format prior to uploading. General guidelines are provided below to assist you.
  • Please note that referees can only upload a single file as a reference. As such, you cannot submit the required form separately from a free-form letter. Please either merge the two files into one PDF or cut and paste your text into the appropriate area on the second page of the form.
• Referees are asked to respond to the request within 10 days in order that applications can be completed in a timely fashion. 

If you have questions or encounter issues with the upload process, please email us at ecpinfo [dot] education [at] mcgill [dot] ca.

Forms

The Counselling Psychology, Human Development, & School/Applied Child Psychology programs (MA, PhD, and Post-Phd) require special Letter of Reference forms which must be saved in PDF format when complete. Note: There is a section on the back of each form to cut and paste additional information.

• Counselling Psychology Letter of Reference Form [.doc]
• Human Development Letter of Reference Form [.doc]
• School/Applied Psychology Letter of Reference Form [.doc]

The Learning Sciences, Human Development, MEd Concentrations in Educational Psychology programs do not require a special Letter of Reference form.

General guidelines

For all letters, we recommend that you are as specific as possible with qualifications, aptitudes, examples and personality traits which speak to the candidate's suitability as a student in a higher education program in this field of study. All letters must be saved in PDF format.

For reference letters not requiring a special form, the letter should:

• Be written on original letterhead from the referee's institution (Required. Letters not on letterhead must be accompanied by an explanation).
• Include the referee's title/position and full contact information at the institution.
• Include the name of the applicant and the name of the program to which s/he is applying.
• Dated - letters should be from within the last 6 months.

Converting files to PDF

Overview

All letters must be saved in PDF format.

PDF stands for Portable Document Format and PDFs have a number of advantages over other document formats:

• PDFs retain the exact look and feel of the original document.
• As they are so easily accessible and will always retain their look and feel, regardless of users’ viewing parameters, PDF documents are the best option for dissemination of digital documents across a large and varied audience.
• PDFs are independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems – for long term storage, this makes them a better choice than formats that depend on things like a particular version of word processing software or the type of computer used to produce them.

Creating a PDF

Create a PDF document from MS Word 2007

• Click the Microsoft Office button , point to the arrow next to Save As, and then click PDF or XPS. (If the PDF option does not appear, you can download and install the Microsoft Save as PDF Add-in.)
• In the File Name list, type or select a name for the document.
• In the Save as type list, click PDF.
• Next to Optimize, do one of the following, depending on whether file size or print quality is more important to you:
  • It is recommended that you click Standard (publishing online and printing).
  • If the file size is too large, click Minimum size (publishing online).
• Click Options to set the page range to be printed. Click OK.
• Click Publish. 

Create a PDF document from a physical original (using Adobe Acrobat)

• Open Adobe Acrobat.
• Click Create PDF from the File menu and choose From Scanner...
• Select your scanner name from the list.
• Choose Front sides in the drop-down menu marked Scan.
• In your scanner window select black and white and resolution.
• To save your PDF, click Print from the File menu and set the printer name to Adobe PDF.
• Be sure to deselect Do not send fonts to “Adobe PDF”.
• Click OK to close the Properties window, then click OK to finalize the Print window.
• Create a file name and save to a location.

If you do not have Adobe Acrobat, you may purchase a copy at www.adobe.com. If you would prefer, you can download a free PDF creator at various sites on the Internet, such as: www.cutepdf.com/products/cutepdf/writer.asp or www.irfanview.ca.

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