Late LOR

[socihealth]

Hey Guys,

I gave my profs their packets with LOR info in early September. Although I sent frequent reminder emails and talked with them often, one of my letter writters let a date slip by. I notified him and he is going to try to get it in quickly. This is for my top choice school. Do you think a late letter will damage my admissions chances?

Thanks for your thoughts!

[sciencegirl]

Do you want to say which school and the deadline? I think for a lot of the upper tier schools, they seem to be slightly flexible with letters coming in late.. not to say that this isn't the case with middle and lower tier schools, but just the feedback from some of the schools I've applied to seem to be that they understand late letters (ie, after I submitted the Stanford app on the deadline Nov 29, they sent me an e-mail saying that LOR would be accepted for another 2 weeks, and I forwarded that to a prof of mine who was stressed with other deadlines.. she really appreciated the extra time to finish). Some of the other schools I applied to (UCLA, Chicago) also seemed to be a bit flexible by one or two weeks about the LOR deadline.

Much I think depends on when the review of apps will be, and I doubt faculty will be meeting on Dec 16 to figure out their incoming class, given all their end of semester deadlines/work and the holidays.

[socihealth]

Thanks for the reply. I was so worried when this happened. My faculty advisor echoed what you posted; there seems to be a grace period for LOR submission at most schools. I don't think this will be a total KOD to my application. My POI told me that the review of applications will occur after the holiday break so it seems that even though this LOR was 2 days late, it will likely be reviewed on time.

Has anyone else experienced any late submissions or problems with LORs?

[sociologyplease]

I've had some difficulty with transcripts, for sure. I've gotten them all in on time, but I've had to continually check to make sure they have arrived and been processed. For a couple of schools, weird things seemed to happen, like they received one transcript in a pack I sent, but not the other, so I had to priority mail another one at the very last minute. I'll be very glad when this whole process is over.

[sciencegirl]

I think everyone has honestly. In fact, my recommender who was late is ironically also on her school's own admissions committee... and I think because there is this unsaid grace period for almost all schools, overworked profs sometimes use it when the end of semester work needs more attention than LOR. 2 days will be perfectly acceptable.