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Long time lurker, first time poster. I started off in community college and didn't make any particularly good ties with my professors. I started at my current university last fall. I am having a bit of a difficult time with the idea of cultivating good enough LOR's from professors before the fall admissions cycle. I thought I had a good relationship with a professor from last semester, but he indicated that he doesn't write LOR's unless he has a profound relationship with the student. I have one LOR on lockdown this semester in my major, and I'm taking another class of his over the summer. To get to the point, I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with using evaluations in lieu of LOR's at the schools that accept them? I like the targeted questions, and I feel like it would be easier to coax a professor I have only had for one semester into filling out that form instead of writing an entire letter.

Just for reference, my stats are 2.8 LSDAS GPA (sent in my transcripts from cc and waiting to see exactly how LSAC calculates some W's and WF's, but this is worst case scenario) 164/171 LSAT (October '11, February '12) strong upward grade trend, bad GPA due to one bad semester where I had to drop out to support family, some decent softs + personal tragedy. Being a splitter, I want every part of application to be as good as possible. Cornell's admissions page says it excepts 2 LOR's, 2 Evals, or a mix of both. I'm assuming there are probably other schools that do the same. Would the one LOR I have + a good evaluation be better than a good LOR + a "lukewarm" one?

A few comments:

1. As far as I can tell, the consensus view on evaluations is that they are generally not a good idea because schools either don't like them or prefer letters. I think LSAC introduced evaluations as an option a few cycles ago, and most schools were never that keen on the idea. From what I can recall, the schools I applied to (mostly t14) would not accept evaluations in place of letters, and didn't seem very enthusiastic about receiving them in addition to letters (if they would accept them at all).

alwayssunnyinfl wrote:I thought I had a good relationship with a professor from last semester, but he indicated that he doesn't write LOR's unless he has a profound relationship with the student.

2. Writing recommendations is part of a professor's job. This guy is not doing his job. You should find some way to shame him (do people still visit ratemyprofessors?).

3. A lot of people have trouble getting two or more LORs from professors who know them well. This is an especially common problem at large state schools. If you can't find a second professor who knows your work well, find a professor who would be happy to write you a letter and give him stuff that will help him get to know you (your transcript, work you completed for his class, your personal statement, et cetera). If you ask a professor and he doesn't seem very enthusiastic, ask someone else.

AntipodeanPhil wrote:
2. Writing recommendations is part of a professor's job. This guy is not doing his job. You should find some way to shame him (do people still visit ratemyprofessors?).

Hahaha, they do, but as I go to one of those giant state universities, most of the students are looking for the type of professor who gives easy A's, which also seems to be the type of professor who doesn't like writing LOR's. I'll definitely be steering clear of using the evaluations, then. Thanks!

P.S., awesome hipster sheep