Who wrote your Letters of Rec?

[objectivityofcontradiction]

I just read through Schwitzgebel's take on applying to graduate schools for philosophy--and I found it pretty helpful for the most part, although, I found the underlying tone of the whole blog to be quite arrogant and pushing the idea that if you haven't been a great student since your exit from the womb than you probably won't get into a top 50 PhD. program. A typical Berkeley guy saying that well, unless you went to these 10 schools, your chances are pretty slim for graduate study in Phil. Rubbish.

Anyway, the part that concerned me the most was his take on letters of Recommendation. I'm just curious about who you asked for your letters. Philosophy professors, duh, but did you also have a letter written from another professor in a different department for whom you did some solid work? Schwitzgebel emphasizes only getting letters from those professors who gave you As. Which makes sense. I'm wondering if any one on here who has recently been rejected from a program believes that it had more to do with their LORs than their personal statement and their writing sample.

The three professors I'm going to ask consist of one professor who I took two upper level philosophy courses with during my senior year, I got an A- in the fall course and an A in the spring. My writing sample is going to be taken from one of his courses.

Next is a professor who I took two courses with, one when I was a sophomore, one when I was a junior. I received a B+ soph year (a course on Kant, I worked my butt off for that B+) and an A- junior year. However, this professor and I are quite close and I must have visited his office 50+ times during my undergrad to talk philosophy. He's been blunt with me in my weaknesses, but I can't think of a better person to write me a letter. Should I be worried it'll be too negative?

I plan to get my third letter from an art history professor who I took 4 classes with and received 4 As. This guys been teaching since the early 70s, did his grad work at Columbia and is a well-known art historian.

Thoughts? Advice?

[see_bella]

I got mine from an undergrad professor, a grad professor, and Research Scientist I worked with/for. Your letters should come from people who can attest to/vouch for you ability to be a graduate student and prospective scholar in your field and could be professors and people you've worked with or for. At best, if you know someone's not going to write positive/good/compelling stuff about you then I'd say don't even think of asking them.

[Javslavin]

After having heard--second-hand--from professors at top 25 schools, the sad reality is that most letters are not terribly useful. As with grade inflation, it seems that there is a trend towards LOR inflation too, in that most letters are pretty similarly stellar. Thus, the ones that stick out tend to be those that are more honest (i.e., subtlety negative), and that tends to hurt an application.

As such, I tried to structure who I asked to write my letters in a way that would help either explicitly address minor issues with my application or cover other ground that I might not have been able to do as effectively in my personal statement. For example, I had four letter writers:

1) My main research advisor, wrote about my research in more detail, and helped to cover a minor blemish on my record (my one non-A in philosophy).

2) My main research advisor in psychology (which in one of their classes I earned a 'B'--because of a late paper), helped to address previous 'time-management issues' in a productive way, and averred my competence in psychology.

3) Another phil professor who specializes in a history (not phil mindy stuff), who I hoped would write in a way to show that I wasn't so narrowly focused.

4) Another phil professor with whom I helped on a grant project, who wrote a very 'personal' letter essentially suggesting that I'm not an asshole and I can get along with other faculty/grad students/undergrads.

Back to the main point, I just asked people who would both give me prototypically stellar letters and who could back up features of my packet/personal statement in way that I, as an applicant, couldn't.

Hope this helps,

Edited March 7, 2012 by Javslavin

[123student]

Your two phil. profs. look like good choices, since you've had academic relationships with them over time and have made good grades with them. I couldn't say more about your choice of your art history prof. without knowing more about your specific interests and whether or not he/she shaped your intellectual developments in any way. I wonder if the shaping/relationship factor would give your third letter more weight than one based solely on a well-known name? That's just a thought. When I chose my recommenders, I considered a few main factors: 1) how well they knew my academic abilities and interests; 2) the weight their letters would carry, which I defined partly as: a) the depth of the academic relationships I had with them, and b ) their experience in assessing students (i.e., how long they had been teaching); 3) how authoritative they were about my work as I presented and projected it in my SOP, which included them being specialists in one or more areas in which I intended grad. study. Generally, throughout the process I felt that substance mattered more than sheen. Though I didn't do this, you might ask 4 or 5 profs. to recommend you, then for each application choose the one you think will best support your interests in that program.

Though every school is different, I found Duke's FAQ page for English applicants helpful in the early phases of assembling my app. (I've applied to Comp. Lit. programs): http://english.duke....pplication-faqs #16 covers LoRs. Some of your schools may have similar guidance on their grad. app. pages.

Edited March 7, 2012 by ECGscholar

[GodelEscherBach]

I just read through Schwitzgebel's take on applying to graduate schools for philosophy--and I found it pretty helpful for the most part, although, I found the underlying tone of the whole blog to be quite arrogant and pushing the idea that if you haven't been a great student since your exit from the womb than you probably won't get into a top 50 PhD. program. A typical Berkeley guy saying that well, unless you went to these 10 schools, your chances are pretty slim for graduate study in Phil. Rubbish.

Anyway, the part that concerned me the most was his take on letters of Recommendation. I'm just curious about who you asked for your letters. Philosophy professors, duh, but did you also have a letter written from another professor in a different department for whom you did some solid work? Schwitzgebel emphasizes only getting letters from those professors who gave you As. Which makes sense. I'm wondering if any one on here who has recently been rejected from a program believes that it had more to do with their LORs than their personal statement and their writing sample.

The three professors I'm going to ask consist of one professor who I took two upper level philosophy courses with during my senior year, I got an A- in the fall course and an A in the spring. My writing sample is going to be taken from one of his courses.

Next is a professor who I took two courses with, one when I was a sophomore, one when I was a junior. I received a B+ soph year (a course on Kant, I worked my butt off for that B+) and an A- junior year. However, this professor and I are quite close and I must have visited his office 50+ times during my undergrad to talk philosophy. He's been blunt with me in my weaknesses, but I can't think of a better person to write me a letter. Should I be worried it'll be too negative?

I plan to get my third letter from an art history professor who I took 4 classes with and received 4 As. This guys been teaching since the early 70s, did his grad work at Columbia and is a well-known art historian.

Thoughts? Advice?

I think there's some reason to believe that it's very difficult to gain admission to top graduate programs unless you have significant pedigree OR your application is just truly outstanding.

I don't think the tone was meant to be arrogant -- he teaches at Riverside, a school with a good philosophy department but not of reputation, and he mentions that students from his school can't seem to break into the top tier.

He made a follow up post about this later: http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2011/10/sorry-cal-state-students-no-princeton.html

Obviously it isn't true that if you don't go to a top school you can't get into (a) a top school -- people do it every year or that ( a PhD program at all -- he never even indicates that this is true. Really the point is just that at top departments the competition is very steep, and without coming from a department that routinely places people in such departments, it can be hard for your or your faculty advisors to know what your application really has to be like to succeed at getting into Princeton or whatever.