LORs: How strict are schools about who writes them? Forum

[czelede]

I was just wondering if anyone knows how stringent schools are about who writes your letters of recommendation?

I ask because I come from a (technical) major where 95% of our classes were giant 100-student lectures and office hours were held between rotating TAs. All of my classes junior and senior year were highly technical and provided little opportunity to demonstrate analytical or communication skills, save for two. Of those two classes, one of the professors is not writing any letters this year and the other one has already agreed and sent in a rather nice LOR.

I've read that some schools (Cornell, for one) are very adamant about the two academic references rule, so I'm wondering now if it would be worth it to scrounge up another letter from my academic adviser (who I also took a laboratory course with), as the professors at my UG are generally very agreeable about this sort of stuff since they understand that nobody really gets to know the professors unless they partake in research. It would not be very personal and I would not be surprised if he followed a template for graduate school recommendations, which many of them do. I have heard that it is no better to have three letters if one is lukewarm than to have just two solid letters, but now I'm a little worried about the fact that only one of my letters is academic.

Other (pertinent?) information:
- I will have been out of UG for 2 years by the time I matriculate (graduated 2009, applying for Fall 2011)
- I did not ask any work supervisors for recommendations, as it would make the next/last year of work very complicated for me if they were to know that I am planning on leaving for law school (I work in the engineering industry)
- My other LOR is from the director of the company/NGO that I do a lot of dedicated volunteer work for in addition to my FT job; she happens to know me very well. No, she is not my mom.

[Haribo]

I think you'll be fine with only one academic LOR. For one, LORs aren't very important, and plenty of people get into good schools with only 1 or 0 academic recommendations. I think it's better not to dilute the stronger part of your app with lukewarm LORs.