Asking Professors for recommendation lettters

I'll give you the same advice I give to my students, get to know at least one of your professors really well every semester, talk to him after class, go to office hours etc. You can ask your former profs for recommendations but as you seem to now realize you'll get better results if they know you better.

Hmm, tough position to be in. One of the things you need to do is to get to know your professors for situations just like this. Supposedly that is the advantage of a small university, but in reality some people at the big universities get to know their professors as well.

Have you done any work with them or any TA's / lab instructors / research assistants? I got one or two rec letters from professors who didn't know me, but their TA's did. I told the professors what I was doing and that I've worked on their research with the TA's and I wanted to see if they would be willing to provide me a recommendation.

I would schedule an appointment to sit down with your advisor and explain the situation and how to approach it. I wouldn't directly ask him for a letter, but maybe they will offer (though I doubt it). You have only seem him once, but the semester is very early, so there is nothing wrong with that.

When is your application due anyway? If you have a month or two, I would take some time to actually get to know some of your profs. Explain that the prospect of the internship made you wake up and realize that you don't know anybody and would like to get to know some of them and get involved with what they do so that you can get a better learning experience and build a network. There's nothing wrong with that.

The other piece of advice I have is once you set these relationships up now, don't abandon them unless you are willing to abandon that reference permanently. It annoys me when I have somebody that was in one of my classes ask for a a rec letter and quickly become my best friend and biggest fan, and then never hear from them again (including whether they got into the program they were applying for). Or, just as bad, somebody who 2-3 years down the road, after no contact whatsoever, asks me for a reference. Either stay in touch professionally, or form new references... Don't expect to get a glowing reference from somebody who barely remembers who you are!

Good luck!

Just remind them how much you enjoyed their class and tell them that you did well in it. Explain the situation and ask them for a letter of recommendation. Tell them that you would be willing to send them your CV and tell them you would like to meet with them if possible. You don't need to get to know one professor "really well" each semester. The only thing that would make a difference is if you did research in one of their labs.

I agree with the other posters about getting to know a professor for this sort of situation. However, even if you don't currently know anyone, it can't hurt to ask. I had a professor once who told the whole class he was more than happy to write recommendation letters or serve as a character reference for anyone who asked, whether he knew them well or not, because he knew how tough it was to get to know professors. Some of your professors may feel the same way. Coincidentally, my professor got the teacher of the year award so many times that the administration barred him from getting it anymore so that some other professors could get it.

Be really careful who you ask for a rec. It sounds like you may not know your profs too well, so try to find out if they write good rec letters or not. One harsh lesson I hope you never have to learn first hand is that there are professors out there who will agree to write a letter of recommendation when asked, then rip the student to pieces in the letter. I knew one such prof who was notorious for such practices. She would decide early on if she felt you were "brilliant" or not and your course grade had no bearing on what she wrote. One letter I read looked like this:

Daniel Doper was a student of mine in EPO 101 and finished his coursework successfully in 2011.

The main problem with the way Daniel thinks is.....

Daniel will have problems studying EPO because.....

The "rec" was insane. The first paragraph contained one or two sentences that were purely factual. The rest of the letter focused on destroying the student.

Be careful who you ask.

Professors are used to writing recs for students they don't really know. Ask professors from classes in which you did well (and that are relevant to the internships), and give them a copy of your resume and if possible a final paper/project to refresh their memories.