LOR From Post-doc

[thorerges]

Hello all, 

 

So I have applied to various programs around the country. I think I am a very competitive applicant for top schools. I am co-author on one paper in Science Translational Medicine, and a second author paper in PLoS Computational Biology. However, for the second author paper, I never actually spoke to the PI, just the post-doc who I worked with. Here is the catch, the post-doc and the PI actually hate each other, I know this for a fact that the PI wants him out of the lab.

 

So I just asked the post-doc to write a letter for me and even though this went against my intuition, i really had no other choice - I had done some stellar work for this publication (It had gone out for review in both Science and Cell before reaching PLoS Comp. Bio.) 

 

Is this something that comes up frequently? Am I advised to just ignore this LOR for my next application? I have heard that institutions ignore Postdoc letters, is this true?