Transfer recommendations--how many? Forum

[zomginternets]

So I've noticed a lot of schools require only 1 or even none.

One of the professors that I asked to write a recommendation insists on doing targeted recommendations and personally sending them to the school, and will only do 4 of them for me (don't ask...). So this leaves me with only 1 recommendation (from the other prof) to use for the other schools I want to apply to. A number of these only require 1 recommendation or even none--so my question is, does that mean they put a lot less emphasis on the recommendations? i.e. in such schools, would I really get any advantage in sending 2 recs instead of 1?

I'm a little loathed to ask for another rec because there is a pretty big anti-transferring sentiment among the faculty at my school.

[maf70]

There is definitely a strong anti-transfer sentiment at my school as well. I sent in two recs from professors. If you only think you can get one good LOR I would probably just stick with that...It's better to have one good LOR than a second lukewarm one. I think LORs are negligible unless it just happens to be stellar or really, really bad.

That being said, you might want to check the LOR reqs at all the schools you want top apply to. I know Penn requires two LORs and prefers them to be from law profs.

[redsoxfan2495]

Just out of curiosity, what schools do you guys go to? I thought that professors would tend to be more understanding of the desire to transfer.

[zomginternets]

Some are, some aren't. The other prof that I gave me my LOR was far more understanding, but even his advice was slanted towards trying to get me to stay at my current school. But I have heard of profs who enthusiastically encourage transferring. I had a friend who said that it was his prof's idea that he transfer.

My intuition (that has absolutely no empirical basis) is that the faculty at T1 schools don't really care, but they do at lower T2 and T3 schools. I'm thinking at the lower T4 schools don't care either, because the profs know that their employment statistics just can't match T1 schools.