Letter of Recommendation Situation - VERY WORRIED

<p>I will try to make this short, even though it is a long story.
Applying to grad schools. Will have 2 very strong letters. The 3rd one is the one that I am really worried about. The 3rd one is coming from a prof I've worked with for the past year, and I have made some stellar contributions to the group. This prof has done some very unethical things. This prof said my letter will be strong (I wrote it and this prof will modify it). Today, this prof found out about a huge conflict that students are having with this prof. When I talked to this prof, this prof informed me that he knew we complained and didn't seem very happy with me. At that moment, I reminded him of the letter that is due and he said he would get on that (I did this just to see if he would reconsider writing me a letter after this). </p>

<p>Now, let me say this, this prof is not someone who would stay impartial and he is also very narrow minded (this is something you guys will have to assume is true). I am so worried that this situation (that should be nonrelated to the letter) will affect my letter because of his personality. The letters are due by the 15th. I don't know what to do. I'm really worried that he will intentionally sabotage me. This is a prof that is generally disliked/despised by those who have spent quite a bit of time with him whether it be through research or having him as an</p>

<p>What would an adcom think if they saw 2 very strong letters, but one that is flat out bad?
Would they contact me about it?
Also, if I do end up getting sabotaged, I am sure I can have other profs verify and support my case, but I don't think the adcom would let me know of the reason why I was declined. </p>

<p>I don't know what to do...I was considering unwaiving my access to one of the schools that I didn't care too much about, but I don't have that option from the application. I've worked years to get to this point, and I will be extremely dejected if this situation ruined my chances.</p>

<p>You can’t expect to get a good letter from a professor that you made a complaint about, what were you thinking? That doesn’t make any sense. I’m afraid you will have to ask someone else.</p>

<p>Get another writer immediately.</p>

<p>Go into your applications and put in the new recommender and remove the professor you have decided is not a good choice. I think most schools allow you to change recommenders right up to the deadline. If he does send letter in, I am not sure they will go anywhere is he is not listed as a recommender on your application. Hopefully he will not bother. </p>

<p>I am struggling to understand why you would have selected this professor in the first place, but you need to move quickly if you hope to salvage your applications. Although I think some schools do put most stock in the first two letters, I do think a negative letter would pretty much eliminate you at many schools.</p>

<p>This is a bit confusing. </p>

<p>Did you add your name/voice to a complaint against the professor? If so, asking him for a letter was a HUGE gamble in the first place. If not, you may want to try convincing him of that point.</p>

<p>You say he is unliked and unethical - it is quite likely that such a reputation has followed him throughout the academic world, which would temper the value of his letter. Remember that (unlike your GPA and GRE) your letters are predominantly studied by your potential advisors, and unless you are changing fields they are likely to know this person at least by name, perhaps more. They may look at even a positive letter from such a person as a negative, and endorsement suggesting that you yourself are unliked and unethical.</p>

<p>If you made stellar contributions, is there another professor or post-doc in the group who could substitute? Are there any publications or presentations to which you can point as proof of your efforts? If he is your primary research recommendation, it will look off if he does not write a letter.</p>

<p>I asked him for a letter because he’s my primary research adviser. Not receiving a letter fr your primary research adviser is probably just as bad as receiving a bad one from him. He is new and untenured and is not well known. Besides, he’s great at putting up an act that you can only expose after a period of time. No matter what kind of letter he writes I will be writing a letter to my department exposing him. I am almost certain he will not receive tenure from all the complaints he’s had.</p>

<p>The end of today is the deadline, so I can’t really ask someone else.</p>

<p>Brownparent, you were not there in my situation. You think Id be stupid enough to do something like this if I had a choice? Besides, I was under the impression that my name would be left out and I don’t know how it made it’s way in there. He was immature about it like always.
Also, what you addressed in your post was not what I was asking.</p>

<p>Right now I am just relying on my other letters (previous research adviser and an REU adviser-this one has extensive contacts with the labs I am applying for and I have a first author pub in a leading journal with him).</p>

<p>Cosmicfish, the work I did is not made for immediate scientific publication.</p>

<p>Also, he made me write my own letters, which I very highly doubt he would edit.</p>

<p>Sorry, I accidentally posted from my roommates account and didn’t notice he had logged onto the computer.</p>

<p>If he ends up writing a bad letter and it becomes the reason for me getting declined, do you guys think I could explain my situation?
It’s probably a long shot, since I heard adcoms will not tell you why you were declined and it would require disclosing info in a waived letter.</p>

<p>Not receiving a letter for your primary research adviser is probably just as bad as receiving a bad one from him.</p>

<p>No it’s not. It’s way worse to get a negative recommendation letter written for you then to simply skip a person altogether. While not having a recommendation letter from someone does conjure up possible imagined scenarios of negativity, it also allows people who wish to to give you the benefit of the doubt. An actual negative letter cannot be mentally dodged.</p>

<p>I doubt an admissions committee would contact you about a negative letter. Although writing a bad letter is considered unethical, they would likely just quietly take the information into account. Occasionally you may have someone contact you, but I’ve only ever heard of that happening in a job search, not for graduate school admissions.</p>

<p>Even if they do contact you, I don’t think explaining the situation is likely to help - instead, it’s likely to make you look bad. I know that sounds weird, but it’s going to sound like badmouthing your professor.</p>

<p>Sent him an email about the situation. Now he’s acting like nothing happened (regarding yesterday’s situation). Then went on to state that the letter will be objective and based on my experience with him, so I’m taking this means whatever happened yesterday won’t affect it. Then at the end he said he would be perfectly fine with me switching to another reference writer if I wanted to. So according to this, the letter should be written as if everything’s back to normal, which means the letter should be great (he already submitted a letter for me recently for some fellowships that were verbatim from my drafts).
I still don’t trust him but there’s nothing I can do a day before the deadline. </p>

<p>If they contact me, I would not badmouth the prof. I would ask if I could have someone of higher authority (other profs) verify my situation.</p>

<p>My main goal for making this thread is to find out if anyone’s had any experience with receiving 2 good letters, but one bad one, and it’s effect on admissions.</p>

<p>Yikes, I would just quietly take him off and thank him for his time. That’s a very sticky situation, especially if you don’t want to burn bridges. While faculty are very much understanding to issues where students get unavoidably intertwined into bad situations, a bad LoR is never good. It’s unlikely that anyone will ask you why you didn’t submit his LoR, but if they do, you can just say that there were some faculty issues that you didn’t want to get involved in.</p>

<p>If they contact me, I would not badmouth the prof. I would ask if I could have someone of higher authority (other profs) verify my situation.</p>

<p>Other professors are not necessarily a “higher authority,” they’re simply different opinions. I highly doubt that an admissions committee is going to take the time to try to sort out different stories from different sources and decide who is right or wrong. If they are really that lukewarm about you, they are simply going to thank you for your time and move on to other candidates.</p>

<p>Very few other candidates are going to be able to tell you “Don’t worry Blue, I got into grad school with 2 good letters and one bad one.” First of all, few of us would know for sure whether or not we had one bad letter, and second of all, few of us would know whether that is the actual reason we didn’t get admitted. What we can say is that admissions is a holistic process and if you have two glowing letters and an otherwise outstanding application, there’s a chance (no one can say how big) that a sufficiently impressed department that really wanted you would chalk the third letter up to some bitterness. Furthermore, your professor is a professional. Despite being a petty person (as you claim), you should just trust at this point that he’s going to write you an objective recommendation. It may not be the most glowing perfect recommendation ever, but it will probably be positive.</p>

<p>The only thing you could do at this point is perhaps ask another faculty member to write you a fourth recommendation, but I’m not sure you’d get the result you want there either.</p>