jacib

Yo while we're talking about sacred cows, I've been dying to share this somewhere (apologies to the OP, 1. I don't have an answer to your question other than to say, I would imagine the reading lists at most of the universities will be quite similar, I mean at least have the same hits on them, for the big OT/NT courses at least. But one thing you could do is email a few professors asking for syllabi and compare who they read in similar seeming courses. If there is any bias that goes to the core of the institution, you should see it. But I think, in general, they will be more similar than different, but those differences are things you will probably find when you visit. From my experience visiting undergrad places, I knew pretty quickly if I'd be happy there or not, and occasionally I probably had an out-of-character negative experience that crossed some place off my list. When you get in places, ask to email current graduate students. 2. Wearing a kippah does not a Jew make. I know people who keep kosher, light candles on the sabbath, keep the fasts, and only wear kippot when they are going to say haShem, which is technically the only time you need to say wear it according to Conservative [rather than Orthodox] tradition. I've also met a person or two who wears a kippah but does not "properly" keep sabbath. I've heard this is more common in Israel. Also, remember the definition of a Jew is not based on faith, or practice, but rather on heritage. As a famous conservative rabbi said recently, you can eat a ham&cheese on Yom Kippur and still be a Jew. There are 613 commandments, not even the Vilna Gaon kept them all.) Anyway, one of my professors pointed out to me that religion professors basically since Frazer and Tylor (since anthropology became a separate discipline, that is) that professors of religion tend to assume that religion is a good thing. Whether they be professors of the OT, NT, theology, Buddhism, Islam, Rabbinic Judaism, NRM's, Sikhism, theorists like Eliade or Wach, they all assume that religion is a good thing, and consequently that everything bad is borrowings, corruptions, politics, culture, a cult/scam, anything but religion. These same people also tend to argue that religion is an implicitly incomparable sui generis phenomenon. The only people I can think of as exceptions to this rule MIGHT be those associated with NAASR, but even then I don't think I can remember reading anything that was actual critical of a religion, in general or in specific. That's the most pervasive bias I think you will get at any of the above named schools.

While everyone at Harvard will be Christian, the MDiv students will range from Catholics and Calvinists all the way to feminist Unitarians who will engage with self declared Neopagans in their ministerial work. Doctrinal orthodoxy is in general not what most of the programs teach; critical thinking is. Moody Bible Institute (though a great school that I have a deep respect for) these institutions are not. Though the degree of heterodoxy will vary, any school with Unitarians won't be a place where your beliefs are challenged by apologists. The majority of the people who teacher Christianity will be Christian (though there could be some Jews as well... Geza Vermes wrote a lot on Jesus), this is true throughout most of the subfields around religion. People tend to have an interest in what they are (this I think is one of the big problems of the field but that's another story). Occasionally there will be scholarly conflicts, there was one in Anabaptist historical studies a few years ago, I forget the details but it definitely to a degree pitted secular historians against sectarian ones... even there the battle lines were not split exactly on partistant lines AND all these people still had to work in the same departments, edit the same journals, go to the same conferences. You can't really be straight up rude, though people can argue that you don't "really understand" the religion if you aren't part of it (as often happens when Anglo-American scholars study say Islam, or Sikhism, or Buddhism, or Bahai). From my experience studying undergrad at one of the best religion programs in the country, one of my professors (of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism) related a story of how he was teaching a particular text and one of his students stopped him and said, "Oh that's not what it means?" to which the professor responded "O rly? How do you know?" and then guy goes on to explain how he really did those meditation practices and that's not what he saw so... I think professor at the schools you are applying to tend to prefer intelligent, interested candidates with keen analytical skills over any doctrinal tests.

Just a random note: I'd put your name on the header of all the pages in case the school wants to separate the packets! Just in case..... As for cover letters, I don't know. At least list enclosures. I am overseas and schools let me submit everything electronically and they didn't ask for a specific cover letter... not necessary but couldn't hurt would be my assessment.

I would second the 10% margin of error standard. That seems to be the most reasonable... except for one school that absurdly wanted 500 words, and I gave them like 590. No one is counting words, I can guarantee you that, so it matters whether it subjectively seems longer. Keeping it from going over on to another page is important here. When there is a difference between what is reported on the grad school application and the department website, it's always on the longer side, and its always going from word numbers to pages. Don't abuse the system and fiddle with the font, spacing and margins, but also don't worry too, too much about 999 words unless you're typing it directly into the app (i.e. unless you're not uploading it as a file). I want to reiterate a point that several wise people have made on these forums: we worry about these things much more than the adcomms do. That said, anything "unprofessional" would look bad.

If they give you no limit, I feel they will not punish you for three pages. Four would be pushing it, more than that unheard of. The longest limit for an SOP that I've seen is 2,500 words (at the most prestigious school in this particular field of the humanities). By short, they mean not 10 pages I think. If there's no limit, 2 or so would be the average probably. If they wanted it shorter than that, they would have said so. If you have more to say, I think they give you the space to say it. I would definitely go detailed. But I'm humanities/social science and the protocol might be different in the hard science (but I don't know why it would be... they want to know your research interests and your experience in both).

I'd contact the the schools directly, ask them how many students come directly from undergraduate programs. Seriously, that's the best place for info. Schools are generally pretty honest and open. What Pamphilia says is really useful too. Arabic and Persian will set you apart (with both of those, you could also pick up Turkish/Azeri fairly quickly, just for fun, even though all three are in completely different families). Maybe that would make a difference? Who knows but the departments. Ask. Obviously be careful in Tehran... I don't know the Farsi, but in Turkish, we say Allah korusun! Teaching English is a good place to start (you can often earn decent money while having a lot of free time), and then with fluent English, I am sure you can easily find places to volunteer where you can get more experience applicable to what you want to do in the future. Or you can stay in America! Many options...

Actually there's already a topic about it there:

I'd post this in the political science section. They'd be more knowledgeable. I know a place like Kennedy encourages work experience, but honestly, look at the schools' websites. Often they will make it clear what they want; I had one school that said, "Though we don't require a masters, a student would need an exceptional record in a field relevant to their proposed course of study to be accepted"; after talking with people already at the school, it was made clear to me that they accept 0-1 students every year like this, so that it probably wasn't worth my time applying. Taking time off is often a good thing and will help your application in most fields; I took off three years to live in a foreign country before going to back for a doctorate and I think it has really helped me. My friend who wants to do IR has been working for the Korean Foreign ministry for a year, mostly to improve her application (she was the one who told me about Kennedy).

Well this thread was seamlessly revived after a year.... I'm reading Geoffrey Lewis's book The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success, which is particularly fun because I get to point out to my students how artificial their "purified" language is... and how most of the words she thinks are Turkish are really Arabic or Farsi (or occasionally French/Italian), and how absolutely ugly and arbitrary most of the neologisms are. I made a series of about 20 bets with one of my students about whether words were loan words or not... and she lost every single one of them.

Yeah it does have a lot to do with secularism, but I think it has a lot to do with having a properly functioning, mostly democratic state too. It's no accident that a religious party in the Muslim world is as likely to have "Justice" in the party name as "Islamic". Turkey has just avoided a lot of the autocratic corruption that lets religious parties gain a foothold by being an effective, and unstoppable, counter power (you can arrest all the communists and shut down all their unions, but you can't arrest all the clerics and shut down all the mosques). The Islamic Revolution in Iran would never have converted the middle class if the Shah hadn't been so autocratic and repressive--Islam offered the only available counter-power, especially after 1954. More recently, look at the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia, or even the Taliban's rise to power--both presented the only possible avenue for order and the rule of Law (the law just happened to be Shariah law, but still). In Turkey, setting aside the fact that military plays a very active moderating influence on politics, there are also just fewer grievances in this country that people would die or kill for. Actually, one of the things that people would be willing to die for is terrorism--the fight against terrorism. Every Turkish soldier who dies fighting the PKK is universal called a "martyr" in the Turkish press (probably as much after the Left-Wing usage as the Islamic one, cf. Haymarket Martyrs). Terrorism is generally seen as an illegitimate tactic -- it is something that "they" do to "us". "They" in this case is both the Armenians (1) (2) (3) and the Kurds (the PKK and others, including some random Islamic ones that fought the socialist PKK as often as they fought the Kurds). The fight against PKK terrorists is incredibly popular here, and has been used to distract from/unify in the wake of national controversies. There have been isolated attacks by religious extremists on Jewish and Islamic targets (in fact, synagogues have been attacked three or four times in this city... but afterwards there's always been a huge outpouring of support), but I think the Turkish people sees itself as a victim of terrorism and therefore couldn't imagine itself being the purpotrator of it. There are constant reminders of terrorism here--every mall has metal detectors and I've been stopped taking a picture in a mall before, but it's more symbolic than effective terrorism prevention because more often than not I'm just waved through the metal detectors no matter what. The appearance of safety (and the reminder that there is a Them attacking an Us) is more important than actual safety. Most of the actual effective operations against terrorism take place in the mountains of Southeast Turkey, in Northern Iraq, and occasionally in Northwest Iran. Paramilitary action is slightly more acceptable, however, so it's not violent extremism but rather terrorism as a tactic that is rejected. When the Grey Wolves do adopt "terror" strategies, it's almost always highly targeted violence against individuals for individual actions (Abdi İpekçi, Hrant Dink, Orhan Pamuk) that closely resemble state terror campaigns rather than a more generalized strategy of trying to disrupt institutions and frighten civilians in general. The tactic is meant to keep the left wing dissidents and ethnic minorities "in line", not to cause widespread panic.

He always explained grading policy really clearly on the first day of class. He drew this giant pie chart, and wrote: "Test, quizes, class participation, homework, essays, all other graded work...5%" and then drew the corresponding small slice of the pie chart. "How much I like you...95%" "Okay are there any questions about grading policy?" It's harder to do that as a University instructor, unfortunately.

I know what you mean about avoiding being to controversial in your statement! While Turkey is a democracy and it seems like neither the conservatives nor the military are going to abrogate that anytime soon, there are also a lot of touchy issues here where speech isn't exactly free. All of Youtube, for example, is still banned here because some Greek teenager made a video that said Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, was gay. Google offered to take the offensive video down in Turkey in accordance with Turkish law, but that was unacceptable to the Turkish government, who worried about the sensibilities of Turks abroad. Nobel-laureate Orhan Pamuk got brought up on charges for declaring (in a Swiss newspaper and during a lecture in Germany) that "30,000 Kurds and a million Armenians" died during the events of 1915. Because the EU specifically made it clear that they would view whatever happened to him as emblematic of the whole Turkish justice system, the Ministry of Justice declined to prosecute him on a technicality (penalties would have been higher because he said this stuff abroad), but there is real popular hatred of the man here. Last summer, maybe two summers ago now, a professor (historian I believe) was given a suspended prison sentence for declaring, during an academic lecture to 30-something people, undeniably accurate things about the state of democracy during the early Republic and that many of Ataturk's ideals failed to manifest themselves in practice. I definitely wrote my statement careful with all that in mind, and absolutely wrote it even more careful for the programs where people specialized in Turkey. The way I explained my project to friends (looking at how secularism functions as a religion, complete with its own myths, rituals, and systems of meaning) is definitely different from how I wrote it up in my SoP, where it was couched in much more general terms. What are your controversial topics?

Yeah sorry I was kind of being a jackass. Anyway, what you aid reminds me of my high school English teacher, who once actually asked a particularly thick girl, "Tell me, Kristen, is ignorance bliss?" He also had a potted plant in his room that he called the Tree of Knowledge; whenever we made a particularly ignorant or idiotic comment, he'd walk over a yank a leaf off the thing. One of the best teachers I've ever had.

Me for one. I go with hoodies and jackets. For punk kids in Boston, the style for guys used to be one zip-up hoodie on top of another until it got really really cold. Sweaters, except for big captain ahad sweaters, never felt right, no matter how many times girlfriends/hipsters got me to buy them, the only ones I ever wore with any regularity to non-formal occasions were ones that looked like the sweater part of the German-army uniform... But with LateAntique I pictured a particular collared-shirt sticking out under a sweater combo, a little like a younger version of the guy who writes this blog type look. I have no idea if it actually applies...

Man re-reading my posts I come off as really bitchy and know-it-all-y.

In the Social Sciences, its neither 1/3 nor 9/10's. Let's look at some Sociology programs: Berkeley (USNWR #1, NRC #3) says: How many students apply? How many are admitted? How many come? For the last 3 years, on average, we've had 380 applications, admitted 34, 16 came. Northwestern (USNWR #9, NRC # 9) (which fully funds all its students) says: 4: How many are admitted to your program each year? We usually admit about 25 people each year. Our goal is to have a cohort size of 13. (applicants last year: 232) I can't find the page for Columbia (USWR #11, NRC #16), but I want to to say it was approximately 270-290 applications per year over the past two or three years, around twenty-something admits, cohort size somewhere between 9-13. So they all seem to have a 7-11% acceptance rate and about a 50% yield, though I'd suspect those rates would be slightly lower and higher respectively at a private school ranked higher than Columbia or Northwestern since private schools tend to offer better funding/demand less teaching. I should point that among private schools, only Chicago, Harvard, Princeton, Penn, and Stanford were ranked higher than EITHER Northwestern or Columbia in EITHER the USNWR's or the NRC's ranking. I would theorize that yield is also slightly lower at a school like Madison which is not in a total sweet city; the reciprocal of this phenomenon would also explain Columbia's higher than expected application number, seeing as most people view New York as a very sweet place to live* and a very easy place for a partner to find something to do. I'd guess that these general numbers would hold true for all of schools in the top ten or so of either list, though not necessarily for all the Social Sciences. Political Science is more competitive, but also has professional degrees to screw everything up. I don't make claims for the Humanities at all. *Anyone who grew up in Boston will attest that this view is erroneous, and that Jeter swallows.

Even as someone who generally finds mainsteam Democrats too conservative*, I'd say that the school would have to be pretty amoral, unethical pricks to hold that against you. The focus as always should be on the scholarship. The ethicist at the Urheimat of "liberal bias" had a pretty convincing piece about why you'd be morally wrong to not hire someone because of their politics. If your scholarship is obviously biased, well that will hurt your chances, but I don't think being in the Young Republicans makes you any more prone to bias than being in the Get-drunk-and-throw-a-frisbee-pseudo-hippies Club (in which I only participated for my first two years, though I am no hippie). I seriously can't imagine a committee consciously taking that as a negative. History, of all the humanities and social sciences, is probably the field that has the most conservative sympathies, outside of Economics and perhaps Political Science. Though I would be totally interested in hearing what other people think is the most conservative friendly field. Classics or philosophy, I could also imagine having a decent sized conservative cohort. I know some historians even actively lean towards the Republican party ideologically, like remember that guy who made up all those statistics about historical gun-ownership... (forgive me, I couldn't resist). In short, include it. It'll look good, and I would be shocked if it hurt your chances. *For a while, if you googled my name you could find me as a member of "Young Greens" but I think that website has since been taken down. You can still find me quoted in some fucking Communist newspaper whose reporter did not identify his news organization when he interviewed me... (he indicated that the article was for a journalism class).

I agree with Hampster's standard, which someone else had said on the other board: go with whatever professors wear in that field (unless you're applying for a professional school). In Political Science, many of my professors wore suits. That did not happen in any of the other social sciences (anthropologists were particularly wacky, some of them), but even there I don't think business casual would be out of place... but perhaps a suit would. But for men, khakis or slacks and a well-ironed, monochrome button-down shirt I imagine would be acceptable anywhere, with or without a tie (I remember very few professors wearing sports coats, and even few wearing ties, except for my political science professors... though one of my polisci professors wore black tapered jeans and was balding in this adorable way that made it seem like he listed to bands like Television and the Smiths in the 80s, but had grown old). On another note: people have this idea that the "Ivies" are an entirely different world, but they aren't. A Harvard interview, a Brown interview, a Stanford interview, a Chicago interview, a Berkeley interview, a Mich interview, a WashU in the same field will all be more or less the same, I'd imagine.... in many ways, in many fields, Chicago is more conservative than say Brown or UPenn would be, and Berkeley and Mich are two examples of public schools which have numerous programs which are certainly more prestigious than many Ivy league programs in the same field. Yale sociology, for example, is a decent program [i'm applying and I'd be happy to go there], but it's small, and much lower ranked and lower key. In the USNWR sociology top ten, there are two ivies, three other prestigious private universities, and five public universities. The Ivy league, it should be remembered, is technically only a sport league, and it officially was founded relatively recently, in 1954... Brown's endowment is smaller than Vanderbilt's, Chicago's, Rice's, WashU's, Duke's, Northwestern's, and Notre Dame's, just to name a few. While there might be some differences in funding structure, teaching responsibilities, and time to degree depending on whether a school is public or private, a school's "Ivy-status" has no inherent effect on any outcomes, except perhaps that the Ivy name encourages more applicants (but not necessarily any higher number of good applicants). I wonder how many of you who grew up without academic parents can name all the Ivies, or off-hand even say how many of them there are... why? Because it's really not an important distinction. Especially for graduate school.

So, Modernity, the ethical lesson to be drawn by future readers is that recommendations should be read before rather than after submitting them? Whereiscarmen: reread my comment careful, please. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in whom I was addressing but I wasn't intending to imply that you were on a high horse, kid... Additionally, the "who cares" as in "oh poor little girl is crying" but instead a "who cares what Carmen did she did, and she asked for advice about the next appropriate course of action, not retrospective advice about she did in the past." Sorry to not make that crystal.

I first read your guys' exchange last night when I was quite drunk and I resisted writing "Aww the military is so cute sometimes" because I worried about being patronizing. But through the clearer lens of sobriety I still feel much the same sentiment, though I still hope it doesn't sound patronizing. Lauren: Don't get me started on Muslim immigrant communities in Europe, never mind Europe's less than enlightened attitude towards Islamic countries in general (who knew a region which rightly criticized American racism and hypocrisy for generations would be so backwards?). The straight up racist/bigotted/religionist whatever bias you want to call it reasons to keep Turkey out of the EU... I mean, I assumed they'd at least make up non-Race/Religion based reasons even if those were the real reasons. The reason that prime ministers and foreign ministers (especially of France and Germany) feel comfortable giving in public seem like the kind that should be said with a wink and a nudge in a smoke-filled room at the Ole Boys Club. One of the reasons that I came to Turkey was that, while I was living in Austria (where my grandmother is from and where I am eligible for citizenship), the Turks were the only people nice to me. It was sickening to see posters that said "He stands for immigrants" "He stands for true Austrians", and it made me reflect that in America we at least have the decency to put "illegal" in front of that immigrant. Very few countries have the American/Canadian/Australian/New Zealander mentality about immigration. Even in Turkey, I tell people I'm American (and I'm a white, normal looking American with blue eyes but not blond hair) and half the time they go "Okay but what's your memleket?" Memleket can mean anything from hometown to homeland to ancestral village, and if they bother to ask about my Memleket, saying "No really I'm America" rarely cuts. It's always where is your father from... (America) okay his father? (Germany) Okay so you're German. My friend Tyler and I went through this once and it got to the fact that his great grandparents were German and Dutch and Irish and English (I just said "Yeah, same thing" when he asked about my family) and the guy was like "Yeah that's really cool that you guys have normal, easy to say names, instead of funny German names like Rudiger or Tobias." Basic concepts like "Italian-American", "Asian-American" or even "African-American" are really hard to grasp in most other countries... Anyway I'm really surprised you don't emphasize the military experience more... I feel like people probably emphasize way less formative experiences in their statements (One time, when on vacation, I totally saw third world poverty between my hotel and the beach, and it was like, really sad. I'm getting this degree to make sure I never have to see it again.). Are you guys worried about "liberal bias" or some such thing?

1) While maybe not the the most moral choice, what's done is done, who cares. I don't think anyone needs to be on a high horse here. 2) It's not by it self going to ruin your chances. Don't kick yourself as if this will keep you out. Especially if the other letters are strong (you said this was your weakest), how can one positive recommendation (remember its still positive if not super detailed) hurt you? I don't think you need to find more schools to apply to. There is a reason most schools want three recommendations, and not fewer.

I'd probably change your project a little bit... perhaps so that it's not quite so the same? Keep the time period, keep the language combination... I don't know how much detail you have to give because I'm not familiar with your field but I think it would be bad mojo to be too similar to this student. Think of it from the point of view of a potential adviser. I mean, most of the time your interests change in the course graduate studies anyways, right? The period won't change, nor will the language combination, I assume, but this is the school you want to nurture your ideas and I feel like being the same as this other woman will disadvantage you. Then again, I don't know much about comp lit, and I don't know how common overlapping works and what-not is, and I don't know how flexible works and such are. On the other hand, like you obviously noticed, it does at the very least mean you're a good fit for the program in generall. The only schools I feel really good about are schools where someone on the faculty is directly studying my region, or a current grad student is. Since schools are so fickle about what is or isn't a good fit, and my project covers a topic relatively rare and specific, knowing that current graduate students shared my broad interests really reassured me about some schools (in Religion and Sociology, "fit" is treated really differently and it was really hard to judge what could be a good fit, especially some of the more interdisciplinary Religion programs, and for Sociology programs where the only people working on religion only worked on religion in American).

Aww hanx! That actually is really touching. It is strange when you start differentiating people from different threads. This is only about the third board I've been really active in, and the first one where I couldn't put faces to most of the names (the other two were punk boards in Chicago). It is so strange connecting people's ideas between threads. I feel like I have a pretty good idea about a few of the frequent posters on here, to the point where I automatically picture "them" when I read a post of theirs. I have a feeling LateAntique wears sweaters in the winter, I don't know why. Speaking of creepy cross threads relating, "Historical-Comparative Linguistics (4)" and "Internship in Geography (2)" sound really cool. What do you do for the geography internship? Also, what "regional" are you studying? Between that and the "information services" master, what's up? From related interests, it sounds like the Middle East, but do you know what you want to do in the vast expanse of time that is the future? Are you to doing this as part of some officer's training or have you fully transitioned to civilian life? When you learned Japanese, were you living in Japan? I've found that makes a huge difference (obviously). As for my own language skills, in my "Diversity Statement" for the California schools I applied to, I went into individual differences I've noticed in the language and the "sociological insight" that its given me (it's amazing how much our word choices and grammar structures say about us, but in Turkish its even more pronounced). I wish I had had space for that in my Columbia statement of purpose (the only place I'm applying to besides Berkeley where someone actually studies Turkey) but they limited it to 500 words so there was barely enough space for anything. I think living abroad is usually looked on kindly and adcomms are good at factoring it in. As an undergrad, I took a class on Lao-tzu and Confucius which turned out to be more than half graduate, students almost all of whom had taught English in China or Taiwan at some point (It was a really good class even though I was the only person in the room who couldn't speak any Chinese... the professor frequently had to translate jokes and funny anecdotes for me). To be completely honest, when I first read your mention of "combat skills" I totally thought it was a very dated Napoleon Dynamite-type parody, and thought "Oh God, those references weren't funny when the movie came out..." and then it took me two sentences to figure out you were serious as a heart attack. I also think a detailed record of your military training is good; I am applying to a bunch of programs outside of my field and they all emphasize a "willingness to be trained in xyz method". I'm impressed by military training, hopefully the adcomms will be too. Your maturity should stand out. All of my friends who enlisted or did ROTC matured really, really fast.

I agree with everything coyabean said, to put it bluntly, you really ought to say right up front, "Yo I survived the post-communist transition to a market-economy... bitch. Any of the other fools applying for this shits do that? Naah, thought not. You gotsta let me in." But you know, academically. This can be done simply by chopping your first sentence off, or alternatively, moving it after the first three sentences (before "At an early age"). Also it's my "parents' language skills." I agree with all of Peppermint beatnik's changes, they're really good even if she can't properly spelled "centre" or "favourite" for an American application*. I might add an adverb or an adjective in a place or two, but especially "{I think you need a transition sentence] English [quickly] became my favourite subject". Also I might add which languages you worked with at the end of the second paragraph: again this is something that sets you apart and you should be quite explicit about it. *I'm kidding to both of you... I think Commonwealth spelling is perfectly fine for these things. I felt I needed to add this disclaimer so you didn't panic and/or I didn't look like a prick.

Ask WIDELY, say something like, "One of my recommenders isn't responding, though I emailed him a month ago. If he doesn't reply soon, could you write my recommendation?" I had to do that... he ended up coming through, but one guy wrote back immediately, one guy wrote back in two weeks so... especially over the holidays, at least know who is available. I'd ask at least two people if you're working on a deadline (though Feb 1st will probably be okay). Generally I think it's okay to have a recommender outside of the field you're applying for, if they can attest to your ability to relevant work: an English professor might not be the best reference for a neuroscience program, but a history professor would probably be alright for a sociology program. In the last scenario, obviously three excellent references from sociologists would be ideal, three excellent references from social scientists would be second best, but an excellent reference from a historian or English professor would probably be better than a tepid one from a sociologist. If you are a hard science, it's probably different, but in the social science and the humanities i think a great recommendation always tops a good one. Also, I think graduate programs usually don't hold things against you that are out of your control. Even if your recommender didn't write an essay on any of them, as long as your other two did (and they're positive) I don't think it will be a problem. But I don't think getting them finished in a week indicates he half-assed them. Especially after you already know what you're going to say, how long does it take to actually fill in one of those sheets? Like 15 minutes? Think of how long and fast our GRE essays were and we didn't even know the questions to start with... My favorite professor who is very on top of his shit and did all of his stuff in a week and I know he wrote me an excellent reco, (he told me things like: "I'm so delighted that you're applying for a PhD" and "Don't apologize for the inconvenience, I think you are precisely the kind of person who should get a PhD and that's precisely what I'm going to say in my recommendation").