A letter of recommendation

[hazelnutpark]

Hi, I'm currently in graduate school in biomedical sciences and planning to apply to law school this fall. I have a question regarding my letter of recommendation. One will come from my current mentor, but, for the second letter, I wasn't sure if it is better to ask an undergraduate pre-law professor whose class I took 5 years ago, or another faculty from my current department.
I got to know the undergraduate professor fairly well but I haven't kept in touch with him.
Any advice would be helpful. Thanks.

[JenDarby]

Hi, I'm currently in graduate school in biomedical sciences and planning to apply to law school this fall. I have a question regarding my letter of recommendation. One will come from my current mentor, but, for the second letter, I wasn't sure if it is better to ask an undergraduate pre-law professor whose class I took 5 years ago, or another faculty from my current department.
I got to know the undergraduate professor fairly well but I haven't kept in touch with him.
Any advice would be helpful. Thanks.

I would select the professor that can best speak to your specific academic capabilities, in relation to other students and in general, which I imagine will be someone from your graduate school. It is not as importnat to have a UG LOR if you are far removed and have another more appropriate academic reference.

[JamMasterJ]

Hi, I'm currently in graduate school in biomedical sciences and planning to apply to law school this fall. I have a question regarding my letter of recommendation. One will come from my current mentor, but, for the second letter, I wasn't sure if it is better to ask an undergraduate pre-law professor whose class I took 5 years ago, or another faculty from my current department.
I got to know the undergraduate professor fairly well but I haven't kept in touch with him.
Any advice would be helpful. Thanks.

I would select the professor that can best speak to your specific academic capabilities, in relation to other students and in general, which I imagine will be someone from your graduate school. It is not as importnat to have a UG LOR if you are far removed and have another more appropriate academic reference.

this. Choose whoever knows you better. It shows

[Samara]

So, related question. Say you've been out of UG for a few years and a UG LOR is out of the question. Let's further say that you could get three work-related LORs and two graduate school-related LORs. What combination is best? The consensus seems to be that three is the best number overall, but should it be 1 work, 2 grad school or 2 work, 1 grad school? Would submitting four still be bad? I'd still have the fifth for a LOCI.

ETA: Not to get too complicated, but consider the three work-related LORs as for different jobs.

[094320]

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[JenDarby]

I would only submit 3 (I submitted 2 to every school) and save 1 in case you get waitlisted and want to provide extra materials at that point.

As far as whether you should submit 2 grad school or 2 work LORs largely depends on the quality of each. I would lean towards two academic LORs personally, but I would place the biggest weight on which provided the most personal and comparative acknowledgment of your abilities and propensity to succeed in LS.

[Samara]

Thanks for the advice! Good to know that I'm not SOL for academic letters.

Why is it that four is not recommended though? If I can submit four and still have one left over, why would that be a bad idea? 2 work and 2 academic seems like a good balance for someone with four years of WE and four years of total school.

[094320]

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[JenDarby]

Thanks for the advice! Good to know that I'm not SOL for academic letters.

Why is it that four is not recommended though? If I can submit four and still have one left over, why would that be a bad idea? 2 work and 2 academic seems like a good balance for someone with four years of WE and four years of total school.

I didn't mean to imply it's not recommended. To me it just seems like 4 might be a bit over kill. I would want to select the best ones rather than drown the admissions committees in letters of personal praise since they do have quite a few apps and LORs to review.

(I don't purport to be an authority on LORs as I didn't even have the consideration of submitting 4 valuable ones.)

[Samara]

Thanks for the advice! Good to know that I'm not SOL for academic letters.

Why is it that four is not recommended though? If I can submit four and still have one left over, why would that be a bad idea? 2 work and 2 academic seems like a good balance for someone with four years of WE and four years of total school.

They don't want to read even more and at some point, it's sort of redundant. I know if I were an admissions officer I'd be annoyed.

Hmm...okay. ITT: a splitter is sad that one area of success in life can't be capitalized on more. It's too bad I can't let them know they're there if they want to read them without submitting them. Like give them the choice if they want the extra ones. I mean, why would they say you can submit four if four would be annoying? Ugh, this whole process is so unnecessarily opaque. At least I have TLS.

[Tiago Splitter]

I'll be submitting exactly zero academic LORs with my apps, so we'll see what effect that has. I'm not too worried.

[094320]

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