More letters than required?

[Bennet]

I have the opposite problem of most people with LORs because I go to a very small college where I'm basically friends with my professors and I've had them all for multiple classes. So instead of not knowing who to ask, I have too many to ask, and all have told me that they want to write an LOR for me. I know I want the professor I've worked with on my independent study to write me one because he was just promoted to Dean of Academic Affairs so that will look great, but I have three other professors who all have their PhDs in the field I'm going into (one of which was also the faculty advisor for the school newspaper, where I was features editor for two years), as well as my supervisor for my internship last fall, and the professor I studied abroad with this summer who absolutely loved me and I know will have a lot of great things to say, but she's a literature professor whereas I'm going into Rhetoric and Composition.

So what should I do? Most schools require three, but some of mine only require two letters of recommendation...would it work against me to send them more letters than they asked for? I had one professor say "send as many as possible to show them how many professors have enjoyed working with you and believe in your academic abilities" but at the same time, I feel like it's possibly that schools would get annoyed with receiving more letters than they asked for because they have so many applications to go through.

So which is it? Send the limit so as not to overwhelm them, or send 4-5 to impress them?

[tskinner]

Sending 4-5 won't impress them, it'll annoy them.

If you're really worried about saying "no" to a professor, then just have some write for some schools and others write for other schools.

However, remember, this is a good problem to have.

[Eigen]

I'm going to disagree with Tskinner on this.

I sent 4 letters to one of my institutions, and they were fine with it- they even had to wait to review the application a few weeks for it, and it didn't effect things. If you have 4 really good LoRs, I think the extra will do nothing but help your application.

If you're not sure, you can always ask the graduate coordinator at the school if it's a problem to send extra LoRs.... Most require 3 as a minimum, some of my online applications had places to attach more than three.

[fuzzylogician]

Yeah, I sent four letters to all of my schools and I don't think anyone was annoyed by it. For sure, it didn't hurt me.

Some schools have explicit policies about extra LORs and you should obviously follow them -- some you'll find on the department websites and others (annoyingly) only once you start the application and reach the LOR section. If you're not sure, ask the DGS or grad secretary at your prospective departments. The only thing to make sure is that ALL of your letters are strong ones, or if you suspect that some will be weaker for any reason, add them as the 4th or 5th letter so that the main ones are the strongest. From what you write it doesn't seem that this is true in your case, but generally there is no point in submitting a DWIC (or a similarly weak) letter; the recommender's name alone won't impress anyone.

[Bennet]

Okay thanks everyone. I think I'm going to go with four because I have four strong options that I don't want to choose between, but I'll check with each department first to make sure their rules aren't explicit about a maximum. Thanks again!