Submitting more than 3 letters of recommendation for PhD Econpmics programmes

[Shivani Pandey]

Hi, 

I'm aiming for top 5 Economics PhD Programmes (Harvard, MIT, Stanford, etc.). Does anyone have any advice on submitting more than 3 letters? I have a 4th letter writer who I RA'ed for. He is too young in comparison to my other letter writers but I know he will write an excellent letter so I don't want to let go of it. What would you do?

[PsyDuck90]

What do the application instructions say? If they allow "three or more" then that is fine. However, if they say three, then it's 3. A lot of application portals won't let you even attach extra things they aren't asking for. The question isn't so much who is older. Having 1 early career person and 2 more established people is fine. You want to think about which 3 will write you the strongest letters and what that person can add that maybe the others can't speak to.