Is a Recommendation Letter from a non-philosopher worthless for PhD application?

[Quine633]

Is a recommendation letter from a social sciences academic who can speak highly of your research abillities in their discipline worth anything for PhD applications? Thoughts?

[hector549]

4 hours ago, Quine633 said:

Is a recommendation letter from a social sciences academic who can speak highly of your research abillities in their discipline worth anything for PhD applications? Thoughts?

It depends. It's better to get a letter from a philosopher if at all possible. However, if you need a third letter, and you have no other options, you could get a letter from someone outside the field.

I had two letters from philosophers and one from an English professor. I got into all the MA programs to which I applied, and a 40ish-ranked PhD program with those letters, so it is possible to get a letter from a non-philosopher and be successful applicant. I suspect that having a letter from a non-philosopher is far less of an issue for MA programs than for PhD programs; they're used to people applying with atypical backgrounds.

Do you have other options?

Edited June 29, 2018 by hector549

[philawsophy]

Piggybacking on this. What if the recommender is from a field related to your nterests? eg a physicist writing for someone interested in phil of physics, stats professor for phil of stats/probability, political science for political phil, etc 

[Spinozian]

I think it depends on three things: the program you want to get into, the person's research, and their familiarity with your writing sample (your best piece of research). 

If you want to get into a program that does political philosophy, and your non-philosopher is a polisci person who does political theory stuff, and your piece of research is something they've offered constructive criticism of in a meaningful way, then I think that'd check off all the necessary boxes. 

In other words, if their particular 'social science' lines up with the content relevant for your AOS, if they do research related to it, and they are familiar with the importance of your writing sample (and it should be important, generally!) then there's nothing on paper bad about that. Especially if some political philosopher would be aware of the work of this political theorist.

However, the initial intuitive drawback is going to be, "why didn't this person have a philosopher write the letter?" 

Even then, though, there might not be such a big problem. A lot of the time I've heard of third letters being written by profs people have TA'd for. That does show some good stuff committees look for (most of if not all funding packages come with the caveat that you've gotta do some TA-ing to some degree). If you've really shown some initiative and led a session or two as a TA, that doesn't look bad on an app! But again, I think this is less helpful than a third letter from a philosopher.

tl;dr - it's less than ideal unless the person is super important in the field more generally (a political scientist/theorist writing you a letter for political philosophy program) but submitting a letter is better than submitting no letter. 

[goldenstardust11]

Meh. I actually chose a language professor over a philosophy prof for my third writer since the language prof knew my work a lot better than this particular phil prof (even though I’m sure he would have written me a good letter, there was also another student applying at the same time that I knew he connected better with and would write a stronger letter for and we were applying to many of the same schools. and the language prof was an absurdly enthusiastic supporter of my academic goals. I had two other very strong letter writers in philosophy: one somewhat well known in a niche area and another relatively unknown but happened to be known personally by a few people reviewing my apps. Honestly, you can’t plan these things. Conventional wisdom would say that three well-known philosophers is ideal but if the other writer would a) write a much better letter b) contribute to painting an even more holistic portrait of you as a scholar and c) their perspective amplifies strengths of yours that are relevant to your application then why not? 

ymmv. There’s no reason one of my letter writers should have been a strong factor since it’s from an unpublished person at a small lac but people in the field actually knew of them. It’s wild how things work out sometimes.

[Quine633]

Thanks for the replies everyone. It's good to see that this isn't a complete no go

[lyellgeo]

I had a 4th letter from an English professor (since I had worked with them on some things), but submitted 3 philosophy letters for those schools that only accepted three. Unsure whether it helped or hurt

[Rose-Colored Beetle]

I did my BA in philosophy and theological languages at a medium-sized liberal-arts school. I got into WMU and Brandeis (MA), and Fordham (PhD, accepted), on letters from two philosophers and one theologian.

I'll note that phil of religion and phil of language are of prime interest to me, and the theologian in question did graduate work on the Dead Sea Scrolls at Harvard. He also knew my work better than either of our other two philosophers did.