<p>^Same here. It was literally a competition among the juniors in APRIL to see who could get the best teacher recs. We had to do things months in advance. I just can’t fathom this.</p>
<p>Alright URichmond, you are 100% correct.</p>
<p>Yes, I was extremely lazy. No, I can’t blame him for not wanting to waste his break.</p>
<p>But to be fair, our teachers never warned us and we were never forced to do things several months in advance.</p>
<p>However, I would appreciate if we did not focus on playing the blame game. Rather, I’d like to make the best out of the situation I’m in.</p>
<p>If it makes the last two posters happy, more than likely your letters of rec are significantly better than I can hope mine will be.</p>
<p>Many international applicants write letters for their teachers (or in the case of grad school, their professors) because the teachers (or professors) don’t know enough English. This really isn’t all that rare. </p>
<p>As anyone who has proof-read or edited things written by other people can tell you, starting out with a solid original draft cuts the work by more than half. If the teacher in question really thinks the letter is a stinker, or inadequate he/she will make appropriate changes. But the effort involved will be much much less than if he/she had had to write it from scratch.</p>
<p>Which reminds me that I have to edit two things for Happydad tonight. So maybe I should quit writing this now, and get to work.</p>
<p>Wishing you all the best!</p>
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<p>Not necessarily. Here’s what you can do: Phone the schools, tell them your letters apparently got lost in the mail, and then promise them that you’ll get your teachers to send another copy of the letters to them ASAP after the break. Once school starts up again, you’ll have the option of asking another teacher for a LOR (email said teacher beforehand over the break, of course, to see if they can get one ready for you in a few weeks), and then use a rush-shipping service to get it to the school.</p>
<p>Mail gets lost all of the time, so this is a perfectly solid excuse. Most of the deadlines for application materials are kind of fuzzy, to be honest; they’ll give you an exact date, but if all your materials aren’t in, they’ll email you a new deadline and keep emailing you until they’ve received all your materials.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>iamkad, I base my opinion about letters of recommendation on my experience as a faculty representative to undergraduate admissions committees, as the director of graduate admissions in my department, and as a member and chair of numerous faculty hiring committees. A letter of rec can occasionally take somebody out of the running by revealing compromising or negative information. Once in a great while, a letter is so extremely positive, and comes from somebody with such authority in his/her field, that everybody sits up and takes notice; generally, though, those letters are written on behalf of candidates whose credentials are manifest in other ways. However, the vast, vast majority of letters are very positive, so they don’t serve to differentiate applicants. And when they’re really over-the-top but from somebody the committee doesn’t know, it’s hard to know whether the candidate really merits such enthusiasm, or whether the letter writer is just gushy. The real function of letters of rec, I think, is to “humanize” applicants and sometimes to give a little extra information that isn’t available on the transcript, etc. So if you’re stuck writing your own, you might think about what you would like a teacher to have noticed about your academic work, your participation in school activities, and so on. Happymom is right that your teacher can always edit it if he wants to.</p>
<p>neltharion: I really like the strategy. I may indeed implement it. However, my only question would be regarding the timing. When would be the best time to make the call(s)? A few days before applications are due? The day of? A few days later? But thank you VERY much for this idea.</p>
<p>jingle: You have no idea how relieving that is to read. Knowing that letters of rec aren’t the make/break factor (especially coming from a seemingly very credible source) takes away so much stress from my break.</p>