Is this common at all to ask for letter of recommendation from non-science course professors for engineering graduate schools?
No, not at all. LORs aren’t about saying you are a great person, they are about first saying you are a great researcher and second saying you are a great student of the relevant material. If your writer cannot attest to at least one of those, it won’t be a good letter.
No, it’s not rare. A lot of students actually do it in order to seems more well rounded, and also it is often a lot harder to get to know STEM professors on a personal level if the classes are very large.
Oh good! because I need 3 LOR for a few grad schools I am applying to, and have had difficult time thinking whom I should ask. I know a spanish professor who enjoyed having me a year ago, and plan to have him next semester again.
@Mandalorian yeah my school is REALLY large, so it’s nigh impossible to get to know teachers on personal basis unless you visit them very often…which I don’t because I don’t have good reasons to XD.
The question is “what can this unrelated professor tell the committee that your best unused engineering professor can’t?”
Again, the focus in grad school admissions is whether or not you can complete the coursework in a timely fashion and, more importantly, how will you do in the research phase. Unless you did research under them, it is doubtful they have anything to say. You would almost certainly be better off getting a letter from an engineering prof even if it only said “Paul got an A in my class.” Because at least that suggests you can handle grad coursework in engineering. What does an A in Spanish tell them? How many Spanish students make good engineers?
Remember, relatively few applicants have 3 good letters of recommendation. But even a poor letter should be relevant.
Hey I know this is probably not the place for it but I am a teacher from outside the US and one of my students asked me to write letter of recommendation for him. However I am not entirely sure if what I have written is good and what us colleges expect. if anyone could give me feedback on my rec that would be great! Just inbox me