very unique EC, or just average?

mikemac
Sun, 22 Nov 2009 23:09:15 +0000

if the Principal Investigator writes you a letter of recommendation that is personal because she/he clearly knows you and is impressed with your work – that is an excellent EC. If some postdoc or grad-student pens it, then it doesn’t carry near as much weight. Same thing if the PI signs her/his name to a letter someone else wrote; its a much smaller world than you think. See, the adcoms don’t know anything about the academic research world. So if you get a letter of rec from the lab they’re going to ask someone in their department “Is Dr. X well known in <field>?” But in the world of research its a small club, and the faculty member either knows X or someone else in the department does; they’ll call X, and if he’s never heard of you then that’s what the adcoms will be told.</field>

You may be thinking “I’ll just list the EC and not submit a letter”. But any adcom worth their salt will wonder why someone who has done such a bang-up job at the lab didn’t send in an extra letter of rec when that would be such a plus; the obvious conclusion is no letter because you didn’t do such a bang-up job after all.