How long after emailing a professor for LOR request should you ask someone else?

[svent]

2 days? 3 days?

(Before saying ask him again, my gut says the non-reply means (a) he doesn't want to write the letter, or (b) dealing with someone who is unresponsive will be a major pain in the ass regarding getting everything in on time.)

[doubledogd]

I don't know your relationship to the professor, but two days seems like an incredibly short amount of time. Often teaching and other commitments make replying to emails secondary concerns, and I don't know that this necessarily means they wouldn't honor the application deadlines. I would wait at least a full week and then decide whether you want to email a follow-up.

In the mean time, figuring out who else to ask won't hurt (just in case). 

[svent]

Well I know this person missed some deadlines for a different student before. I also know 2-3 days isn't much time but my other LOR writers answered within a day, and I'm concerned about an early December deadline coming up. The mid-December deadlines aren't as pressing.

[knp]

I'm getting the sense that you can't go talk to any of these people face to face, because you live too far away? I might have different advice if you can pop your head around any of the relevant people's doors, so just checking. I'm also going to assume that you have already sent the email you're waiting for the response on. If you haven't, send it by 9 a.m. tomorrow at the very latest!

With those assumptions out of the way:

1) You have to give this person at least until Monday. Sorry! Them's the breaks.  Did you know when you sent your email that this person had missed some deadlines before? If yes, it was a bad idea to wait this long to ask. As they say, "Poor planning on your part does not necessitate an emergency on mine." It'll probably be fine! I don't think the delay is going to have any consequences beyond giving you worse nerves over the next couple of days, but you don't get to go bothering a person after only two days when your justifiable nervousness was caused in the first place by how late you asked the question.

2) That said, I think it might be kosher to ask your backup person something along the lines of "Hello! I am applying to graduate schools this fall and I am trying to figure out who I want my letter writers to be. For informational purposes, and not as a formal request from you just yet, do you feel that you could write me a strong letter?" Then you are on their radar, but you have not wasted their effort drafting a letter before you're sure you'll need it.

[random_grad]

I'd give a week. Then send a message saying "just wanna make sure the previous message was delivered properly" - always blame the technology. Or if you don't care much about this prof's reponse, email the other prof directly. Then if both respond, you can divide the reqs between the two.

[sjoh197]

8 hours ago, random_grad said:

 Then if both respond, you can divide the reqs between the two.

This ^^^

[svent]

You're absolutely right. I should have asked people sooner. I didn't do it sooner for various reasons (none of which is good). Indeed I am too far away for a face-to-face. So one important aspect of my choice is people who are easy to get in touch with. I will go ahead and ask another person for a reference at least for my earliest deadline now.

On another note, one school (with a January deadline) only requires 2 LORs. Is it better to stick to the 2 or not? It's hard to say if my 3rd LOR would be slightly stronger or slightly weaker than the other two (I can get a different 3rd LOR from someone I'm taking a class with now, but early December is too early to ask for).

[random_grad]

2 hours ago, svent said:

only requires 2 LORs. Is it better to stick to the 2 or not?

I am of the opinion that when bureaucracy gives a guideline, follow that guideline. I had a school which also asked for only 2, so I only gave 2 (I got admitted). In fact, there was room for only 2 uploads. So the website left me no choice. You may want to justify to your 3rd recommender why you didn't pick them though. I found that the trickiest part.

Edited November 13, 2015 by random_grad

[DaysofEOre]

29 minutes ago, random_grad said:

You may want to justify to your 3rd recommender why you didn't pick them though. I found that the trickiest part.

I'd love to know how you handled this. I may be in this position very soon...

[fuzzylogician]

The likelihood that a professor will ask you why you didn't have them write a letter for school X is small, if you ask me. Just don't bring it up yourself. If anyone asks, I would say something like "I'm having Profs A and B write letters for me. Unfortunately the school doesn't have space for a third letter, but I really appreciate your support!"

[random_grad]

1 hour ago, DaysofEOre said:

I'd love to know how you handled this. I may be in this position very soon...

In my situation, it was that one of my profs knew me really well, and the other was the prof with whom I wrote the writing sample. It took me a good half a day or even more to write that email to the 3rd prof. ( Back in the day all emails to profs took me like half a day or more )

 

23 minutes ago, fuzzylogician said:

Just don't bring it up yourself

I totally agree. The reason why I had to justify is because I somehow forgot to check how many recommendations one had to submit and assumed it was 3, so I included that dpt in the list for that professor to send letter to.

[DaysofEOre]

23 minutes ago, random_grad said:

( Back in the day all emails to profs took me like half a day or more )

Been there!

[fuzzylogician]

This calls for a PhD comics: