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AAUW Fellowship Recommendation Letters: Two Letters, No Dossier Services

Two letters, uploaded by the recommenders themselves, from professional email addresses. A missing letter can turn a finished application into an incomplete one, and AAUW does not consider incomplete applications.

ScholarshipUnion Editorial 2 min read Updated Oct 6, 2026

The official rules

From the official page and AAUW’s requirements article:

Two letters of recommendation are required.
Recommenders may be “advisors, professors, colleagues, or others who are academically or professionally familiar with the applicant”.
Register recommenders with their professional email addresses, rather than personal ones.
Register them early in the online system so they get the request in time.
AAUW does not accept references from dossier services such as Parment or Interfolio, and discourages standardised or form-letter recommendations.

Who to ask

AAUW’s list is broad, but your letters should cover the criteria your own narrative cannot prove. A strong pair usually looks like this:

Letter 1: academic

Your thesis supervisor, PI or a professor who taught you in an advanced course. Speaks to academic excellence and, for doctoral applicants, research originality.

Letter 2: impact

A current professor, lab head or professional supervisor who has seen your work outside class — including mentoring or outreach for women and girls.

If you are already enrolled in the U.S., one letter from your current programme is valuable: it shows the plan for the award year is feasible. A recommender from your home country can speak credibly about your community work there.

Brief your recommenders

Recommenders write better letters when they know what is scored. Send each one a short pack two to three weeks before the window opens:

1
The scored criteria
Academic excellence, feasible plan, commitment to women and girls, STEM career impact, financial plan — plus originality for doctoral applicants.
2
What you want them to cover
Pick one or two criteria per recommender so the letters do not repeat each other.
3
Your CV and draft narrative
So their examples match yours.
4
The deadline, in their time zone
The 2027–28 window closed at 5:00pm ET on 17 September 2026. Give them a personal deadline at least five days earlier.

What a useful letter contains

Comparison. “Top 3 of 60 students I have taught in this course” tells a reviewer more than “excellent”.
Specific episodes. A problem you solved, a result you produced, a workshop you ran.
The women-and-girls evidence. A recommender who has seen your outreach can confirm it independently.
Feasibility. A current supervisor can say the plan for the year is realistic.

Pitfalls

Things that sink otherwise good files

Registering recommenders late in the window. Using a personal email for a professor who then never sees the request in a spam folder. Asking a famous name who barely knows you. Routing the letter through Interfolio or a similar service, which AAUW refuses. Not checking in the portal that both letters show as received before you submit.

If a recommender goes silent, contact them early and replace them in the portal if needed — there is no published extension for late letters.

Next: check the money

FAQ →

Once both letters are in, the rest is in your control. The FAQ collects the rules AAUW has answered directly.