<p>It seems common for the letters of recommendation to be able to be submitted after the application deadline. In general, how long after the application deadline is acceptable?</p>
<p>I think it would likely depend on the school. The best bet would probably be to ask them directly.</p>
<p>I would be cautious, though… Could your application be hurt by not having everything in on time?</p>
<p>Completely depends on the program. I would say more than a month is too long, but it also depends on the application deadline. If the deadline is December 15 and the faculty are not going to look at applications until they return from the holidays anyway, you have longer than if, say, the deadline was January 15 and the faculty planned to begin looking January 18.</p>
<p>But I agree with nano, you need to try your best to have the recommendation letters submitted on time.</p>
<p>My general sense is that the “soft deadline” is whenever they start to look at the applications (or, at the very least, around that time). Since you don’t know exactly when that will be, it’s always best to do everything you can to make sure everything is submitted on time. A couple days may not matter, but a couple weeks could–and there’s no real way to know, unless they tell you specifically.</p>
<p>Hey everybody,</p>
<p>Sorry for taking so long to get back to you guys. All the deadlines were in mid December, so I emailed the 4 departments. 3/4 said 1 or 2 weeks late is fine. 1 of them explicitly said they don’t really review anything til January. Still waiting on a reply from the 4th one. </p>
<p>Thanks for the input!</p>
<p>Yeah, I totally see where you’re coming from. Only one of my profs might submit it after the deadline anyway. She just wants to wait to assign me a final grade first, so I will hope she has the rest of the letter written and then its just a matter of adding in something about my final grade. I’ll make sure to keep an ongoing dialogue with her, I am still in her class after all.</p>
<p>Good suggestion. Class is curved so might not be able to get an actual final course grade before the deadline but maybe doing well enough on the final will be good enough. Thanks for the tip!</p>