LOR alma mater questions/thoughts

[victoriansimpkins]

Two random questions/thoughts: 

Do you think it matters what our LOR alma maters are? Do adcoms really look that closely at WHO is writing our letters or just WHAT they say? 

Do you think it makes a difference if we applied to our LOR writers' alma maters? (I applied to 2 programs that my LORs went to and not sure if that matters one iota or not and I'm curious what you all think!)

[havemybloodchild]

One of my letter writers went to Stanford through post doc...both the people she wrote letters for applied to Stanford and neither of us got in.

My main advisor and letter writer went to UCSB, we’ll see if that helps me at all ??‍♀️

[placeinspace]

My MA advisor and mentor wrote me such a great letter that I cried reading it and she got her PhD at the school I have an implied rejection from. I ways hoping it would help but it doesn’t look like it did!

[mwils15]

I would speculate that it more matters if our LOR writers know faculty who are on adcoms in a given year. If an application reader personally knows someone who wrote an LOR that could make a difference I’d imagine. It might be the case that sometimes profs have especially strong ties to faculty at their alma maters, but not always

[havemybloodchild]

9 minutes ago, mwils15 said:

I would speculate that it more matters if our LOR writers know faculty who are on adcoms in a given year. If an application reader personally knows someone who wrote an LOR that could make a difference I’d imagine. It might be the case that sometimes profs have especially strong ties to faculty at their alma maters, but not always

That totally makes sense.

I will say also my recommender from Stanford is a Victorianist, which has nothing to do what either of us she recommended is interested in researching, so that probably had an impact on the weight of the rec as well.

Edited February 6, 2019 by kendalldinniene