<p>Hello,</p>
<p>When a school states that they require a letter of recommendation from a science professor, would it be alright to ask a TA for a letter of rec instead and then have the professor co-sign it? </p>
<p>I went to my TA's office hours regularly and only went to my professor's office hours 3 times so it seems I could get a better letter from the TA. Or should I just directly ask the professor for one?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>If the program requires a letter from a professor, I’m not sure a letter from the TA is an adequate replacement. </p>
<p>Profs are asked all the time for LORs from students they may know only slightly. (Comes with the job…) Ask the prof, include a CV with your request so he has some idea of your accomplishments. The prof may ask the TA about you/your grades anyway as part of the letter-writing process.</p>
<p>get it cosigned</p>
<p>I have a feeling bedreddawgie knows his stuff so it seems like it would be permissible to have it cosigned. </p>
<p>My concern would be about the quality of the letter from the TA. It might also raise red flags from admissions committees about why you couldn’t obtain a letter from a full professor. Are there any other science profs who could write for you? If I were applying again, knowing the thing I do now, I would realllllly hesitate to get a letter from a TA simply because it seems like letters from professors pull more weight in this process than many give them credit. FYI, I’m in the process of hearing results from the schools I applied to, and i will be in medical school this upcoming July.</p>
<p>My late husband was a prof. He was asked to write LORs for students in his classes–even ones he hadn’t had much contact with. He usually asked the TA (if there was one) for input before finalizing the letter.</p>
<p>Also writing a letter of recommendation is a skill that takes experience and practice to do well. I know when DH and I were TAing, neither of us had ever written one before. When I got my first real job after grad school (teaching high school) and had to write LORs, my first few were pretty awful. Not awful in that I said bad things about the student or were full of spelling and grammar errors, but awful in that they didn’t address the issues that colleges were looking for. And they tended to be overly bland or overly critical until I figured out what I supposed to be doing.</p>
<p>One other issue–is your TA a grad student or an undergrad? Not as an obscure a question as you might think. D1 an D2 were both TAs as undergrads. Asking an undergrad TA for rec puts the TA in very uncomfortable position for lots of reasons.</p>
<p>(And don’t assume that your TA is grad student. D2 was TAing a Linear Analysis class when she was only 18 year old freshman-- and younger than everyone in her section except for 3 kids. When she told her class she was celebrating her birthday–they all assumed she was turning 22 or 23, not 19.)</p>
<p>Just my $.02–feel free to ignore.</p>