How to Cancel/Retract Recommendation Letter

[aklvkk]

Hi everyone,

I asked my work-study boss to write a recommendation letter because I work in a center advocating for gender/sexual minorities and figured his letter would highlight a different aspect of my personality. However, recently it came to my attention that he's been manipulating/antagonizing other interns, hasn't been supporting their work properly, and has just not been doing his job (he's new to the school). I therefore don't want a recommendation letter from him anymore (I'm planning on getting one from my old boss instead... I should've thought this through more initially), but I'm not sure how to ask.

Should I just make something up, like telling him that I forgot the cap number for recommendation letters?

Does anyone have any advice/have gone through something similar before?

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[Whyamionhere]

I'm sure there's a more mature way to do this that I'll let someone else come up with but you can always have him turn in his letter and then NOT designate it for any of your schools - you have to manually assign which schools get which letters, and I think it might let you leave it not assigned to any schools.

 

[aklvkk]

Thank you! That way I don't have to hurt his feelings or cause drama. But right now I have 6 rec letters, which is the maximum set by the pre-med commitee. Unless I retract my request, I can't request my old boss to write me a letter.

(The rec-letters are coordinated through the pre-med committee after I give them the contacts for my recommenders, if this info helps.)

 

[DrHart]

ask him to submit it individually to amcas instead of going through your premed commitee

 

[aklvkk]

Thank you everyone! I think that's probably the best way to do it. I talked to my pre-med advisor, and she said it might not be as big of a problem I may make it out to be if the recommender hasn't written the letter yet (which he hasn't, I'm 99% sure; he underwent surgery shortly after I asked and has been out since). So far though, it seems like people are leaning more towards just letting the recommendation slide... I think this is the better option since I plan to continue working under him.