<p>Hey I was wondering, how important is the person writing your letter of reccomendation? Besides the content of the letter itself does getting a letter from an alumni help? What about prestige of the person? If so, how much do they help?</p>
<p>yes, it helps. A lot of professors know professors at other schools, or at least know <em>of</em> them if they're widely published. For instance, it was widely known in my undergrad program that if one wanted to do grad school at Harvard, you should forget which professors knew you best and all that jazz, and go straight to two specific professors whose recommendation was golden. And yes, people that you otherwise wouldn't expect to get in did when they had those recs, so I believe it.</p>
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...if one wanted to do grad school at Harvard, you should forget which professors knew you best and all that jazz, and go straight to two specific professors whose recommendation was golden.
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What if no profs you know of are widely-published or famous?</p>
<p>Just go to the professors with whom you've taken more than one class, and in whose classes you've done your best work, and gotten great grades.</p>
<p>Academia really is a small world. If the professors are in our field of study, odds are very very good that we know who they are, and what sort of students their department produces.</p>
<p>If on the unlikely chance no one on the admission committee knows who they are, we can easily find out what they published. But even if they are a junior scholar, we probably know with whom they studied, and who was on their dissertation committee. (Academic genealogies are very meaningful.)</p>
<p>I had the good fortune of taking a class from one of the most famous professors in the field and so, that helped a lot, obviously. But, my other two letters of reference were from people who knew me well (my undergraduate thesis supervisor and a professor that was more of a friend than a teacher, really), so it won't be held against you that you don't know famous professors, but you will likely have a slight leg up. Then again, don't just get a letter of reference from a famous professor just cause. Get to know them by taking their class and participating actively.</p>
<p>Go to someone who knows you well and can write a meaningful letter over someone who's famous. If you have someone who's famous who can write you a meaningful letter, that's a coup, but it's overall more important to have insightful, example-filled letters than to have letters from famous people.</p>