Letters of Recommendation

[neurotic_cow]

Hey all, I have been asked to write a letter of recommendation for a PsyD program from someone I would consider an acquaintance and have only ever known in a personal context from many years ago. They say that one of the letters has to be from a clinical psychologist. My immediate reaction was not to do this and that it feels icky to me but thought I would ask if others do this?

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[WisNeuro]

I would not write the letter, personally. But I would also be very explicit to the person asking that my letter would likely not be very helpful to them given the context in which I know them. Writing a letter essentially saying "I kind of know this person from 10 years ago, and to the best of my knowledge, they haven't killed anyone," doesn't exactly move the needle for an admissions committee. If anything, a milquetoast letter could end up hurting their chances. Unless it's a diploma mill, then it probably doesn't even matter.

 

[neurotic_cow]

I would not write the letter, personally. But I would also be very explicit to the person asking that my letter would likely not be very helpful to them given the context in which I know them. Writing a letter essentially saying "I kind of know this person from 10 years ago, and to the best of my knowledge, they haven't killed anyone," doesn't exactly move the needle for an admissions committee. If anything, a milquetoast letter could end up hurting their chances. Unless it's a diploma mill, then it probably doesn't even matter.

That was essentially my thoughts as well. I thought it was very weird that this person asked me to do this, as I would have never ever considered asking an acquaintance from college to write a letter of recommendation for grad school for me.

 

[ccool]

I agree with the above, including letting them know why not. If you’re feeling generous, I would also recommend briefly telling them what they should be looking for in a letter writer instead and why.

As a grad student I was often asked by undergraduates to write their letters of rec for various professional schools (PA school, Schools of Dentistry, Master’s programs). After the first one, I had to take a step back and remember that not all people have knowledge of these little professional nuances that seem standard to us at this point... and apparently not all have access to or have made use of good pre-professional advising. I had two still ask me to do so after explaining criteria of ideal letter writers, procedures for asking, and potential implications of use of ideal and not ideal writers. They said they didn’t have any one else. I agreed to both of those but only with their full understanding that the letter would be extremely neutral at best and under ideal circumstances, would be unlikely to add anything to their application and otherwise, possibly be harmful.