Letter of Reference

cosmicfish
Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:13:50 +0000

If you have been out of school for a few years, a management LOR would be fine because they can speak to your work ethic and performance NOW and because it is unreasonable for many students to get 3 LOR’s from professors they have not seen in a while. A more reasonable comparison to the grad student issue would be to use a slightly more senior co-worker to write your LOR - someone with maybe 3-4 years in the profession.

The big negative with obviously junior LOR writers is that it always begs the question “why isn’t the senior guy writing this?” If you can address that in your SOP, more power to you! For work, one of the more common issues is that you may fear the loss of your job if your manager knows you are applying to grad school (can, does, and has happened). For educational references, this is a lot weaker. The prof is by definition vetted, respected, and established, and writing these letters is an expectation of their job - so why are they getting a letter from an unknown, perhaps about-to-be-kicked-out grad student instead?