Co-Sign Letter of Recommendation?

[paymaant]

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Is it detrimental to my application if one of my required letters of recommendation from a science professor happens to be a collaborative letter from my physics professor and physics lab TA?? I feel like my TA knows me better than my professor does...Will dental schools look down upon this? Thanks for your help!

 

[paymaant]

any help is appreciated!

 

[doc toothache]

Is it detrimental to my application if one of my required letters of recommendation from a science professor happens to be a collaborative letter from my physics professor and physics lab TA?? I feel like my TA knows me better than my professor does...Will dental schools look down upon this? Thanks for your help!

If the only intent of the letters of recommendation is to elicit information from someone who knows you better, Aunt Ethel would easily suffice. In your case, if you need two professors to write one it should be a piece of work worthy of publication.

 

[paymaant]

Hi Doc,

I believe you misread my question. The letter of recommendation would be from a professor and a teacher's assistant (all from the same class).

 

[doc toothache]

Hi Doc,I believe you misread my question. The letter of recommendation would be from a professor and a teacher's assistant (all from the same class).

Your professor does not know how to write?

 

[paymaant]

very funny. I have had the same professor and TA for the past year but I believe the TA knows me better.

 

[doc toothache]

very funny. I have had the same professor and TA for the past year but I believe the TA knows me better.

You can re read the first sentence of the post or just continue to ignore it.

 

[deez]

.

 

[wcombs]

They want letters written by experienced professionals. A letter from a grad student won't carry the same weight and having your professor sign it won't change that. Get a letter from the guy with a PhD, even if he doesn't know you as well.

 

[dantemac]

I don't see a problem with this so long as the letter has the signature of the doctor and doctor only. He has to endorse all parts of the letter.

 

[paymaant]

hmm, so I guess having a collaborative letter is not sufficient...

 

[Member90817548]

You can have a TA write a letter and then you need the actual prof to write a letter stating the TA knows you better... And so on. I would double check your schools will accept this as I don't know that it works for all of them.

 

[ballyhoo]

OP, I'm not sure how much my references played into this, but at least in my interview at NYU, they told me I had spectacular recommendation letters, one of which was a letter from my post-doc co-signed by my PI, and another of which was a letter from my TA in a non-science course co-signed by my professor. I feel like as long as they write a stellar recommendation, it doesn't matter too much. I had other recommendation letters as well.

I ended up being rejected from one school that I applied to and got interview invites from the rest. I eventually was choosing between UPenn and Tufts. So really, it doesn't matter that much 🙂 Just make sure other parts of your application are also great!