letter of rec advice needed Forum

[jd5]

One of my recommenders just emailed me saying he will be sending my letter out "around January 18." Will LSAC be able to process that in time for my applications to be received before February 1 deadlines? And even if they can, how drastically reduced are my odds at Harvard? Is there any scholarship money left at NYU and Columbia at that point? Aaaaaahhhhh.

I asked my professor for a recommendation pretty late (early December), so I'm not really sure how to ask him to speed it up. I have two recommendations in already (one from a professor, one from my current employer), but this last one is from my thesis adviser and likely to be the strongest of the three.

What should I do?

[stargazin]

I think it would be too late by January 18 for both admission and money. It's even pretty late now. Last year for fun I did a very rough scatterplot of money vs. date sent for NYU and Columbia using data from lawschoolnumbers (http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... &start=450) and from that, at least, it seems pretty clear that after day 120 or so, the odds of getting significant money diminish.

[Samara]

Send in your app now and add the letter to your file later. The timeliness of your app is more important than a third LoR at this point.

[jd5]

Day 120 being right around New Year's. Oof. This sucks. This last letter would be my strongest.

[Samara]

Day 120 being right around New Year's. Oof. This sucks. This last letter would be my strongest.

TBF, letters are fairly unimportant.

[jd5]

Yeah, I figured they're less important for admission but might weigh more for scholarship purposes at Columbia. But at this point, I'm not sure I'll be in on time for consideration for those anyway.