Recommendation letters from faculty in your desired field of study

[westred]

<p>Hi all,</p>

<p>I'm a college senior planning on a gap year and then going for a PhD in biological anthropology. I'm starting to think about all the application materials necessary, and I feel good about everything except for my recommendations. For my undergrad major in anthropology, I took all my major courses with the same prof (who is actually just a lecturer status, not on tenure track professor--is this bad?). I'm now doing my thesis with him, so I expect this rec to be dynamite. But since most programs require at least 3, I'm worried about the other 2. I think I'll be able to have at least one or two pretty good ones about my general intellectual capabilities from either an English/French/Italian professor, but I'm worried that won't be good enough to get me into desired programs.</p>

<p>Basically, my question is this: is it bad if out of my 3 recommendation letters for graduate school in anthropology, only one of them is from an anthro professor?</p>

[juillet]

<p>A tenure-track professor is better than a lecturer, but a great recommendation from a professor who has taught you multiple times is better than a lukewarm one from someone who doesn’t know you very well. So if that lecturer has taught you in multiple classes, that’s fine.</p>

<p>But yes, that is somewhat bad. You want at least 2 of your recommendations to be from anthropology or related fields (so a sociology or history professor recommendation would be fine). But if you took all of your major classes with only one professor, then you really can’t avoid having recommendations from other professors. If you took related courses in other social science departments, those would also be a logical choice. Either way, have your professor note in his recommendation letter that he taught all of your major courses.</p>