Choosing 3rd Letter Writer

[mentoz95]

I am a German student who plans to apply for several Phd Economics (mainly in the US). The 1st and 2nd letters will be written by two professors for who I worked as an teaching assistant. I attended quite a few of their lectures and exams, so they will mainly focus on my academic background.

During the summer and spring breaks I did internships as a research assistant for several German economic research institutes and for a famous economic adviser council. The head of the council is aside from this position also the head of one of the institues where I interned. I consider to ask this professor to write the third letter for me because he could use information of two internships to talk about my research experience. I did not have a lot of contact with him personally but I received good letters of recommendations (around 4 pages over all), that explained what I did there exactly (and so forth), from the institue as well as the council.

Beforehand I would like to hear the idea from other people (who probably have way more experience than me regarding grad school admission) if this third letter sounds like a sound idea.

Best regards


 

[fuzzylogician]

Sounds like a decent option, but you may want to also tell us what other potential letter writers you are considering, if you really want to know what we think. It's always going to depend on what your other options are. 

[mentoz95]

Thanks for your reply.

As an alternative I could ask another professor, whose lectures/exames I attended, from my university for a recommendation letter. Another option would be to ask one of my advisers who worked with me during my internships. Most of these advisers are phd students or already hold a phd.
I have read that most admission committees prefer to receive letter of recommendations from a professor. The option stated in my first post has the advantage that the prof did his phd at a decent us university (princeton) and his letter may (due to his reputation) carry more weight (?).