<p>Hi, just wondering about the importance of recommendations in your application?</p>
<p>My guess (and it is only a guess) is that for most people, they don't particularly matter. Most college graduates are able to find two or three professors who are willing to say reasonably nice things about them. A bad recommendation could conceivably hurt. Occasionally, an extremely strong recommendation might tip the balance for a marginal candidate.</p>
<p>I was overseas when I applied to law school 25 years ago. Two of my professors had offered to write recommendations; I wrote to them, as well as a third professor, asking them to send applications to the office at my alma mater that forwarded such things to law schools. The two who had offered to write recommendations somehow failed to follow through; the third (who had not offered) did write one. I asked my employer to write a second one, and she did so (after asking me to write the first draft for her).</p>
<p>I started the process of applying to ten law schools; I was offered admission to seven, and rejected at one; one considered my application incomplete because I didn't have enough recommendations. The tenth sent a lengthy "part two" of the application with several essay questions. By the time I received it, I'd been accepted at my first-choice school, and I didn't bother to finish it.</p>
<p>The school that rejected me was a long-shot. At all of the others (save one), lacking the required "minimum" number of professor's applications wasn't an obstacle. This isn't an approach I would recommend to anyone, but does serve to support my guess that recommendations don't generally make that much of a difference.</p>