Your heart is set on law school. You've worked hard, earned the grades, spent summers filing briefs at your hometown district attorney's office, and you're waiting for one more thing: the letter of recommendation from a big-name Harvard professor.

Don't hold your breath--so is everyone else.

In general, Faculty rise to the occasion for their students, but most write hundreds of recommendations every year and the load has increased in recent years.

"I hate it," says Professor of History James Hankins of writing recommendations. "I despise it, but it's part of the cost of doing business in a meritocracy."

Take a Number

For senior Faculty--especially those with the double whammy of famous names and small classes--hundreds of students line up for a letter of recommendation with a weighty signature.

Hankins estimates that he writes about 300 letters of recommendation each year. Mark A. Kishlansky, Baird professor of history, puts his yearly figure at around 120, while Buttenwieser University Professor of History Stanley H. Hoffman says he writes upwards of 800.

Hankins says is not surprised that he is asked to recommend as many students as does.

"I'm a head tutor--I'm in the line of fire," Hankins says. "But I've stopped writing for law schools--there are enough lawyers. We have to keep the numbers down."

Thomas Professor of Government and of Sociology Theda Skocpol, who habitually teaches small classes and advises many theses, says contact with students can be a double-edged sword.

Although she enjoys working closely with students and fully expects to be called on to help them in the future, small classes come with the price of tremendous amounts of work.

"Between Oct. 1 and Christmas it gets overwhelming," Skocpol says. "It takes about a day a week--a really substantial amount of time--and it is beginning to spread out to other times of the year."

She was especially surprised, she says, to realize that professors who teach a range of subjects get more requests for recommendations than more specialized scholars.

Luckily for students, professors say they rarely turn down requests, and when they do, it is always for a good reason.

When he feels unqualified to recommend a particular student--either because he does not think highly of the student's promise or because he does not know the student well--Kishlansky simply refers the requester to another Faculty member.