sapphire93

I am in the process of applying for Masters/PhD (in the UK) and wanted a second LOR off a person who has previously supervised me and have worked for in a teaching position so have a strong relationship with. However they told me that they would be unable to write me a reference for PhD as they believe I am not ready. The day before this I had been in contact with a potential supervisor at another university who had suggested a project they were looking for a student for and seemed quite interested (they had been replying to all of my emails in the space of a few hours) even though I had informed them that I was an undergraduate. This person knows my intended letter writer well and I have told them that they supervised me, so I feel that I am a bit stuck if I can't get a LOR from them. So now I am not sure how to proceed. I feel very uncomfortable continuing applying for a PhD this year without this person's support, and if I decide this, I don't know what to say to the potential supervisor to end the conversation, but not on bad terms as I would be interested in working with them in the future. (Unfortunately the university's MSc program is not a good fit for me, so I would not want to be there unless I was a research student). Also, I am concerned that my letter writer feels he does not think I am ready for a PhD. I would like to know why they think this, but feel that asking them outright isn't taking good initiative and I should know myself. I know I have a lack of research experience, so it may just be that they expect students to have more experience before entering research degrees, but if it is something else I want to fix it.