Disastrous oversight, LoR heading

[Comedian]

Hey, guys.

Today there was a very vexing situation.

I am to submit 2 of my applications before Dec 31. Unfortunately, one of my recommenders was out of office and didn't check the mail, so I had to ask else one person. He is a venerable and well-known professor and knows me well, however he asked me to write a sort of plot for he edit it himself and submit. Probably I shouldn't do it, but he was very busy and later changed some paragraphs and the letter structure.

I put the following to the heading: "my former student ... is applying to the History (Anthropology) Department at Berkeley (Texas-Austin / Pittsburgh) University..." and asked him to put the needed University and department to the appropriate application. But later he has shown me the text sent to the admissions offices and.. he didn't change this line and submitted the primary variant.

This professor is the third recommender and he will not resubmit it as soon as he left the country today and there is only one University that requires two letters (they are strong and sent in time). The other two require at list three letters.

How do you think, will these words weaken my chances?

[Strangefox]

I put the following to the heading: "my former student ... is applying to the History (Anthropology) Department at Berkeley (Texas-Austin / Pittsburgh) University..." and asked him to put the needed University and department to the appropriate application. But later he has shown me the text sent to the admissions offices and.. he didn't change this line and submitted the primary variant.

How do you think, will these words weaken my chances?

I do not think that it will weaken your chances. It was the prof's sloppiness, not your fault. For the schools it will look as if the prof has written this intro sentence in a draft and then forgot to change it for different programs.

I would not worry about that.

Good luck!

[Comedian]

Thanks

I thought I may look like he was in hurry and the letter wasn't very important for him, so it can't look strong..

hope you're right!

[franks98]

Oh jeez... I'm so sorry, but I can't help but find this funny! I had a similar thing happen to me. I ran into one of my letter writers in the hall and got to talking. He was telling me how he wrote very strong and personalized letters for me and blah blah blah. It was a pleasant exchange and as we started walking off he turns around and says, "Oh yeah, I made one mistake. I left the name of School A in the letter to School B. Sorry! Don't worry, it makes me look bad, not you!" And off he went. I've tried to not think too much about it, as it's entirely out of my control. I'm hoping it doesn't have too negative of an effect on my application, though!