What to do if I am writing you a letter

If I am writing you a letter for graduate school or a fellowship, I need the following material two weeks before the first deadline: If you are applying to more than one school, I need a list of schools in machine-readable form. The form I use names the school and the department to which you are applying. It is a Lua program; here's a sample:

local cs  = 'Department of Computer Science'
local csd = 'Computer Science Department'
local cse = 'Department of Computer Science and Engineering'
local cis = 'Department of Computer and Information Science'
local ciss = 'Department of Computer and Information Sciences'
local cise = 'Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering'
local comp = 'School of Computing'
local scs  = 'School of Computer Science'
local eecs = 'Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science'
local seas = 'School of Engineering and Applied Sciences'

return {
  washington = {
    dept = cse,
    school = 'University of Washington',
  },
  cmu = {
    dept = scs,
    school = 'Carnegie Mellon',
  },
  harvard = {
    dept = seas,
    school = 'Harvard',
  },
  -- ... more schools can follow ...
}
Please validate your file by running lua on it, as in
  lua my-schools.lua

Back to Norman Ramsey's advice for students.