<p>One of my recommenders have not submitted his recommendations yet. I used the embark online application service and have resent the confirmation request to him twice. I applications’ due dates were a week ago. I would like to send him an email, but I guess I just don’t know how to go about phrasing it.</p>
<p>Any suggestions?</p>
<p>First, don’t worry too much about a late LOR - they are very common and readily forgiven. As to your email, be polite but direct:</p>
<p>Professor Slowpoke:</p>
<p>I have learned that the letter of recommendation we discussed has not yet been received by PROGRAMNAMEHERE. If you have submitted it, please let me know so I can follow up with PROGRAMNAMEHERE. If not, please do so at your earliest convenience as the deadline has already passed. </p>
<p>The letter may be submitted online here:
LINK-TO-SUBMISSION-SITE </p>
<p>Sincerely,</p>
<p>hnbui</p>
<p>Agree with WilliamC, but you should also think about recruiting another reference. </p>
<p>Also, if you know the person well enough to get a LOR, then you should know the person well enough to use the phone and call the person. email is TOO easy for some situations, and lacks a sense of urgency.</p>
<p>I fully endorse WilliamC’s suggestion. Email is ideal because it includes the necessary link.</p>
<p>I’m going through the same problem right now. I called my recommeder, emailed him, spoke to him in person and still nothing. I don’t think it’s that he doesn’t want to write it, he’s just very busy (and disorganized). A friend is expecting his letter from this professor too and it’s the same story, only my friend is almost accepted into a program, but he needs that letter to make it official. I don’t know what else to do, I’ve sent the link at least 5 times, called him once and spoke to him in person twice. I think I should start looking for a new recommednder.</p>
<p>dsl,</p>
<p>Yes, find someone else. This person could write great letters, but if that were so, he should be able to bang yours out quickly. The fact that he hasn’t should be a big warning to you that he may never do it or that it will not be well done.</p>
<p>Some people, like professor X, prefer email for things. It’s common among academics, especially those that are a bit introverted. But because it is impersonal, it has disadvantages, especially in that messages can often be misunderstood. When in doubt, and when you need action, USE THE PHONE. It will not hurt you.</p>
<p>Email is great when specific information needs to be sent, such as a link as the poster did above. And it is asynchronous, so you don’t need to meet in time. But, so many folks suffer from email overload that the chances of an email being overlooked are high. A good combination when you want to prompt action is an email AND a phone call referencing the email, with a request for a callback. This is not necessarily the “academic” way, but it is a well proven technique in the business world.</p>
<p>newmassdad,</p>
<p>Thanks! I am definitively ask someone else for the letter. I actually did call the professor and he said he was working on it, but he hasn’t even registered to submit it. By now I feel I’ve pushed it as much as I possibly could have, so it is best to find a new recommender.
Thanks for the advice !</p>
<p>dsl, Glad I could help. As you saw, a telephone call (and even more, a personal visit) can tell you so much more than an email. Whenever I troubleshoot a situation, and that is what you were doing, I always like to start with a phone call. You can just learn so much more from the pauses, tone of voice, enthusiasm (or lack of!) in the initial greeting and such.</p>
<p>Good luck with admissions.</p>
<p>I am having a similar problem only my professor sent 7 out of the 11 schools i applied to a rec and over the past month or so i have been sending reminder emails and requests through the school applications I called his cell phone and had his secretaries contact him, the problem here is that he has been one sabatical this past fall and even this spring so i had no way to contact him. then today he emails me saying that "he is happy to do 5 or so recommendations but 10+ does not make him happy " I can understand that and I guess I may have applied to a rather large number of schools but its kinda ****es me off that he never respond or told me that I had too many applications. I replied with appologies, thanks and begged him to submit one further recommendation to a rather important school that I really wanted a chance at. the other 3 are less of a problem since I was already accepted into one despite the missing rec, another one only requires 2 so i will transfer the workload to another professor and the third i guess I have to scrounge up a 4 recommender which is going to be difficult at best if not impossible considering I don’t form close relationships with professors easily.Or i will just have to abandon that school. the professor i am talking about I had worked with his grad students on research my freshman and sophomore years so I was rather shocked when he sent me that email. anyway… any opinions or thoughts and suggestions?</p>
<p>wow, that’s tough, I think your professor IS being kind of unreasonable, I mean it’s not like he has to write 10+ different recommendation letters for you…well there are people who takes on attitude when they have the power/opportunity. Good luck to you.</p>
<p>hope, professors are human, too. Your only choice is to beg and plead. I think your strategy of “please, just one more” is a good one, and appeals to any humane instincts the prof may have left. :)</p>
<p>thanks for the replies, I did beg and so far no response, but I rarely got responses from him in the past. I was just stunned when I got that email, I never knew there was a special courtesy of applying to very few school to alleviate an extra hour of work for a prof on sabbatical.</p>
<p>Apologize for taking his time, thank him for the ones he has put in and tell him that his remaining letters would make a lot of difference to your graduate school applications for which you have been working very hard.</p>
<p>why don’t you just use your own school’s letter service and just send the letters through that. Most schools don’t require any special forms offline or online as long as the letter is printed on official school letterhead in a sealed official envelope.</p>
<p>fayewong (and others!)</p>
<p>I don’t know how you initially contacted your references or what you discussed, but please allow me to make a suggestion regarding future references, whether for job reasons or education:</p>
<p>Always discuss the situation before considering to use a person. This means discussing what you’d like said, to whom, when, timing and so forth. If multiple letters are involved, make sure that is clear in the beginning. Do this by phone. </p>
<p>If you find the slightest hesitation on the part of the prospective reference regarding any part of the process, DO NOT USE THAT REFERENCE. This hesitation could be as simple as difficulty in setting up an initial phone call. </p>
<p>I realize this can lead to disappointment. But, would you rather be disappointed at the start or disappointed by being sooooo close to the goal…?</p>
<p>How are everyone’s LORs coming along?
I finally got that letter I had been waiting for. I went to my prof’s office hours and he said he would do it that day, he even apologized for taking so long to write it. Well, he didn’t write it again! So I spoke to the grad adviser, so she emailed him, I showed up at his office, and I got my letter now. I am so relieved! My recommender was actually really nice and helpful about the letter once he got to do it. I’m glad I’m done with the application process, now I’ll proceed to check my email compulsively :)</p>