Non-professor Letter of Recommendation - ADVICE NEEDED!

[jamiLAW]

Hello everyone!

This is my first time posting on here; I was just wondering if I could get your advice on a dilemma I'm having.

Many people have told me that LORs should come from professors/academic sources only. HOWEVER, I'm currently the president of my fraternity, and while being president, my fraternity was almost shut down, but through a lot of effort, I was able to keep it around. Because of this, I wanted the alumni advisor of the fraternity (an alumni from my school who was in my fraternity) to write a letter of recommendation talking about the strengths I displayed while doing this.

I believe this would make me stand out from other candidates, but at the same time I always hear people telling me to stick to professors. The alumni advisor is not a lawyer himself, but I still think he could write a good LOR. What do you all think???

[Eugenie Danglars]

I've never heard "it must be professors ONLY," I've heard "Have at least one professor." The other(s) are usually employers. If this guy knows you well and the letter is done tastefully (I'm imagining a worst-case scenario where he writes "Jami saved the fraternity and thanks to him hundreds of young freshmen will know the joys of kegstands!"), then you're probably ok.

I would use this is a secondary recommendation, i.e., if the school requires two LOR's, send two from profs (or one each prof/employer) and the alumni one as third.

HTH.

[JJDancer]

Especially if you are in UG, or 1-3 years out of UG, you NEED at least one professor/TA to write you an LOR because they want your academic abilities evaluated. Additionally, you could definitely have the alumni advisor vouch for your other strengths/character etc.

Good luck

[quickquestionthanks]

How old is this alumni? What is his current profession?

If he is less than 10 years out of college and works for Enterprise, it may seem like you just found a brother to help a brother out. But if he is the president of the alumni association and a respected attorney, that could be awesome. See what I mean?

[capitalacq]

--ImageRemoved--