Help! One of my recommenders just fell through and the first app is due in a month

[phil413]

One of my rec'ers just wrote me saying she would no longer be able to write my recommendation, and there's a little more than a month before the apps are due. I am evidently freaking out - what should I do? 

Technically, she said she would be able to write me one general letter (ie. not tailored specifically to programs) but not send it to 16 different programs. Should I still push for it, or should I settle for one general letter, or should I try asking another professor so late in the game?

 

Apologies in advance for the incoherence and clear not-keeping-it-together.

 

THANKS!

[fuzzylogician]

Do you have other options for strong letters? A month in advance is actually not that terrible. I doubt many professors will actually start writing letters this early anyway, so it's more a question of whether these people have already committed to writing many other letters and would not want to write any more. 

 

As a backup strategy, I would ask this person to write you the general letter, so you at least know you have enough letters for your submissions. The letter can be uploaded to interfolio or a similar service so the recommender will not have to upload the letter to each one of your applications separately (you will have to do that, through interfolio). Then I'd see about finding another person to write you (tailored) letters, and I'd probably decide which letter to submit based on what I believe each letter says. 

[TakeruK]

Don't push a prof to write letters for you that they don't want to write -- it won't go well!! It's okay to have a general letter -- it doesn't need to be personalised for each school. I can also understand a prof not wanting to submit letters to 16 different places -- even if they are all the same, it can take ~10 minutes per school (find the link, figure out how to log into the system, type in the identifying info, upload letter, etc.), so 16 schools is almost 3 hours of time!!

 

If you really want this letter, it's probably best to figure out how many letters the prof is willing to send (X), and then pick which X schools to ask this prof to submit to. At the same time, ask another prof to write the remaining letters. If you pick the X schools that have the earliest deadlines for the first prof to write, then that might give you an extra few weeks for your new prof to write their letters. 

 

I don't know about your field and your situation but 16 schools does seem a bit excessive!

[MsDarjeeling]

I 2nd TakeruK's suggestion.  Some fields are unfortunately that competitive, but it does create a lot more work for professors.  Hopefully this professor agrees to do some of them and then you can get someone else to take care of the others. 

[phil413]

Do you have other options for strong letters? A month in advance is actually not that terrible. I doubt many professors will actually start writing letters this early anyway, so it's more a question of whether these people have already committed to writing many other letters and would not want to write any more. 

 

As a backup strategy, I would ask this person to write you the general letter, so you at least know you have enough letters for your submissions. The letter can be uploaded to interfolio or a similar service so the recommender will not have to upload the letter to each one of your applications separately (you will have to do that, through interfolio). Then I'd see about finding another person to write you (tailored) letters, and I'd probably decide which letter to submit based on what I believe each letter says. 

 

Thank you SO MUCH, ALL for such helpful, helpful responses. I am so grateful that such strangers online would jump so empathetically to my rescue (although I probably did sound like I was losing it). I have calmed down a little and have reached out to another professor for now, who probably doesn't remember me as well, but we'll see. Fingers crossed.

 

Thanks for the tip on interfolio -- I checked it out, and it definitely looks helpful! I had not heard about it before -- is it expected / do most applicants use this to ease the process for their rec'ers? I didn't know this was the norm -- oops -- no wonder my professor was unhappy. Does it allow the rec'er to just upload it to interfolio, and I could submit to the individual schools, even if the contact information I submit on the application system is the email address of the professor?

 

I also understand a professor not wanting to submit so many recs, but I was thinking the rec'er could essentially write the same one and just change the name (tailored?) of the program...

 

fuzzylogician, if the application system directly contacts the rec'ers for their letter, how did you mean I could decide which letter to submit after asking for both? Would it not have to be the letter of rec'er whose contact information I submit?

[fuzzylogician]

I don't think using interfolio is necessarily the norm. It's a way of storing letters that might be useful e.g. if you're not applying straight out of school but want to have professors write you letters while they still remember you. The letters can then just sit there and wait for you while you go off and do whatever other thing you are doing before applying to grad school, and you're not depending on the professors to upload letters or remember you when you're finally ready to apply. It saves you the difficulties associated with having to deal with the professors several years after you've graduated, assuming you're organized enough to think ahead and plan for this kind of eventuality. I've recently learned that interfolio is also used by certain universities in the process of applications for assistant professor jobs so that's basically how I know about it. 

 

How many schools you apply to and how accommodating your professors are probably depends on your field and your personal situation. In my field 16 schools would be quite a lot, but I hear that in psychology, for example, it might not be considered excessive. Either way, if you search on the forum you'll also find professors who put the cap at 4 or some other arbitrary number. Generally, professors will write you just one letter and they may tweak it slightly for each school, but even if no tweaking is done - as was already mentioned - just finding all the emailed prompts and going on each app and filling the generic form they tend to have there and then uploading the pdf letter will take a few minutes for each app for each student, and that can really add up. That's why I proposed interfolio as a possible solution, especially if the replacement letter you might get is weaker than a non-tweaked letter from this professor. If, on the other hand, as others have suggested, you can get another strong letter and you can spread the load between the two professors, that might be a good solution too.

 

Now, I think (caveat: I've never actually done this myself!) the way you would submit an interfolio letter is different from how you submit a letter that comes directly from a recommender. Each interfolio letter is associated with an email address (something that contains "interfolio" as part of the path), and you put that address instead of the recommender's email address in the appropriate field in your application. I've heard of some people have problems because some application systems have automated forms in addition to the actual letter and that interfolio didn't deal with that well, but assuming that those local difficulties can be solved, that's basically what you do. I imagine that if the system can't deal with interfolio (or the other way around) then there would be a way to have the letter emailed directly to the department, but it's something you'd have to look into and I'm sure will cause some amount of pain at some point. 

 

If you've already submitted contact information for your recommenders, things will be somewhat complicated. If you can't change the info yourself, you'll have to contact someone to change it for you to the address where the interfolio letter is stored. What I meant by deciding which letter to submit after asking is the following - I'm imagining that everybody agrees to your arrangements and you end up with four letters, including the non-tweaked one and the new fourth letter. Based on talking to your professors and/or guessing, you can decide which three letters are the best. Perhaps the choice is different for different schools, e.g. because they have different strengths or because one or more of your letter writers are alums or former instructors at a certain school. Once you do that, you enter the recommender info for the letters you've chosen into each application. Of course, this is assuming that you haven't already submitted this info and if you have, as I said, you'll need to see if/how you can change it. You might also ask about the possibility of submitting all four letters (assuming the new one is good!) -- many schools will agree to that and that might be a way to get something good out of the ordeal you're being subjected to.

 

On a side note, I ended up needing a fourth letter for a similar (but different) near catastrophe, and in the end almost all the schools I applied to agreed to take all of my four letters. I try and think of it as a reward for the totally unnecessary anxiety it created in my life.