More than 3 LoRs

[speculum]

Hi All,

I got some strange advice and I was wondering if anyone else has encountered this:

I'm having trouble deciding which intern supervisor to ask for my 3rd recommendation and since it's rather late, I need to decide asap. I asked my father, who is a professor, and he said just send in 4 LoRs. This sounds ridiculous to me, does anyone know if it would it help or hurt my application?

Thanks!

[Eigen]

The schools I'm aware of, it would hurt/do nothing.

Most schools will only review 3 LoRs- if you send 4, they'll either take the first 3 or 3 at random.

Choose your best 3 recommenders and send them off.

[fuzzylogician]

It depends on the school so you should ask the departments you're applying to. I ended up submitting 4 letters (long story) and as far as I know they were all read. In fact, my letters were mentioned as one of the strongest parts of my applications by several professors during interviews and visits. I did make sure to list my recommenders in the order in which I would like them to be read, in case some departments chose to only read 3 letters, but anyway in my case the problem was a flaky recommender so I was just trying to make sure I meet the minimum requirements. If you have the time to plan for this, however, it can't hurt to ask.

[iamincontrolhere-haig]

If the applications you're working on are done over the Internet and only allow three letters one possibility is to have your extra LoR writer send an additional "soft" letter to somebody they know at each institution (if that's an option and your intern supervisors are connected to academics). I would only have your third or fourth writer serve as the "extra," though--depending on whom they know--because you'll want your strongest letters to be in your main file.

Alternatively, just ask the three people whom you think will write you the best letters!

[runonsentence]

Some departments will read all four, and some will have adcoms that will be really annoyed at being asked to read more than the mountains and mountains of materials that are already required of their applicants. So, to reiterate advice above, I would ask.