Potential super-late letters?

[tarski]

Most of my apps allow extra letters, and this term I took a course with a prof that I really want to write a letter for me. It was my first course with him, but he really, really liked what I did and he's well-known and works in my area and is older (as opposed to my current ones who are younger, which my thesis advisor keeps on telling me might be a problem). I wasn't originally planning on asking this guy at all, but things went well and he is enthusiastic about it.

Now, most of my deadlines haven't even passed yet (even though I've submitted/almost totally submitted them all), so I can easily add him. However, 4 of them have already past- 2 today, 1 Nov 30 and 1 Dec 1.

The Nov 30 and Dec 1 I feel pretty good about sending his letter in, partially because their 'actual' deadlines are mid-January, but the Nov30/Dec1 was their diabolically early international deadline, and partially because he knows tons of people at the program. Unfortunately, all the evaluation for this course really happened after those dates and I just didn't see asking him making much sense back then.

The Dec 15ths were domestic+international deadlines, though... but one of them is an extremely competive program, and I feel like grabbing every advantage that I can. Should I just send it in? Asking permission might be better, but their app deadline was yesterday, and 300+ applied; I'm guessing their email is a bit backlogged... would an unwanted extra letter *hurt*, or would they just at worst ignore it?

Of course, if they start reviewing fast, they might reject me before they ever see the letter, but I'm not sure they'll be quite that fast...

[Ziz]

I'm guessing the worst that could happen would be they would ignore the letter, and that's not so bad!

[tarski]

Hm.. a couple of the comments in the thread about late applications scared me, but my prof just said it would be fine to go ahead and do them. He's been doing this for a while so I guess I'll trust him.

In other news, I've gotten way too fast at putting together detailed rec-letter writer packets.