I'm one LoR short!

[EvelynD]

Hey guys! Another day, another problem, this time in the form of a missing LoR. I did my BA and MA at the same university and our faculty is small. My specialization only consists of a couple of people, two of which I have worked closely with. They taught our classes and were also my thesis advisors. However, like most of you I need three letters for most of my schools. And this is problematic. I have emailed a couple of people who's class I've taken or who I've worked with otherwise but they all admit they didn't work close enough with me to be able to comment on my research skills. Ergo, they all decline.

 

So what do I do? Contact all the faculties and explain? Keep on trying to find that 3rd letter even though I've practically run out of people to aks? Help!  

[fuzzylogician]

You need that third letter if it's required, there won't be a way out of it. But it can be just ok, not great, if the other two are strong. So I would suggest going back to the people who you've walked to and asking again if they would agree to write a letter just based on what they know, and you realize that this is not a lot and not about your research abilities, but explain that you just formally need a third letter for this official requirement and you only worked with these two other people, both of whom are writing you (what you expect to be) strong letters. Hopefully there is someone who you took a class with who remembers you and where you did good work, and you'll get what we call a "did well in class" letter, which is kind of useless, but you need it anyway.