Changed recommendation provider - looks bad?

[Provincial Cosmopolitan]

Hey all, I'm hoping you can help ease my mind; I'm a bit nervous.

 

I've been applying to a number of schools for their PhD programs in political science at a number of schools. Some of the deadlines have passed already. The problem is that only one of my professors actually uploaded the letter on time (he is very punctual and a great guy). Another professor just did a bunch earlier today, but I think that is fine, because I called the departments in which the deadlines passed and they said not to worry.

 

The third professor is the problem. All throughout the past semester, at least since October, we talked about him writing me a letter of recommendation, and he was very enthusiastic about doing it. I reminded him several times of the deadlines, but now he seems to have disappeared. I would have given it more time, except for a couple reasons: first, another student told me that he was supposed to write a recommendation letter for her and never did it. Secondly, I had an independent study with this professor, and I was supposed to go back and forth with him a couple times on a 30-page paper that I wrote. He said three drafts, but after I submitted the second draft - on time - he never responded, even though I emailed him a few times, politiely, about it. I don't know what happened. I know that yesterday he was at his computer, because he submitted the grades for a different class I took with him, but he did not respond to any of my emails (which I've been sending on a light and friendly basis since Dec.).

 

I wrote to another professor and told her about the situation. She has been extremely helpful, and had a letter of recommendation written up for me by the end of the day yesterday. I only floated the idea with her slightly before. She is incredibly helpful: she called departments of admissions and found out how to send the letter, since I could not get back into some of the applications to send her the official request. She even said that she would email one of the letters to a local school, and got the chair of my school's political science department to hand deliver her letter of recommendation to the chair of the admissions committee at that school as well.

 

All of this sounds very good, and I am unbelievably grateful to her (to her especially, I should say; I'm grateful to everyone who took their time to write a letter for me). However, I do tend to worry a bit. I'm worried that because of the need to either make special arrangements to get the letter there on time, or because I had to go back into the application to delete one professor and add another, I might look bad. Maybe it might seem that I am not well organized or that I somehow offended the professor who never wrote.

 

Is this crazy or is this something worth worrying about (though, obviously, worrying is not so helpfuly anyway)?

 

In any case, thanks in advance for any advice you all may have.

[helmetedhamster]

I have no idea if this will affect your chances at admission or not, but I thought I'd let you know you're not alone in this problem! I also had a very enthusiastic professor disappear after the application deadline passed, and I had to contact the admissions department to allow an alternate reference to submit my final letter of recommendation. I'm worried too, mainly that admissions will think my original recommender failed to write a letter because of misgivings about me or something I did.

Edited January 25, 2013 by helmetedhamster

[uromastyx]

Don't stress. This shouldn't be held against you, as this is more common than you'd think. They will review the materials that they have accordingly. No worries.

[Provincial Cosmopolitan]

Thank you all for the encouraging words!

 

It really is too bad that so many professors do that. Writing and receiving recommendations is an important part of academia, not only for admissions, but for grants and other things. You'd think that people would be more responsible.

 

Edited February 22, 2013 by progress518

[zabius]

I recently experienced something very similar. Several weeks ago, I interviewed at a program that I'm really interested in (I'd call it my second choice at the moment). After the interview, the department chair notified me that one of my letters had not been uploaded. I tried contacted the professor who was supposed to write it, but he's MIA and didn't answer my emails for over a week. When I explained the situation to the chair at this school, she recommended that I just find a new person to write the letter. I think that most programs are very aware that sometimes letter writers just drop the ball for one reason or another, and they most likely won't hold it against you if you swap out letter writers (even if it's well after the application deadline, as was true in my case). Honestly, they'd rather just have all three letters (or however many they asked for) instead of an incomplete file, especially if they were impressed with the rest of your application.