LOR Nightmare! <sniff...sob>

[Doctor Octopus]

Most of the schools I'm applying to have received my LORs. The exception: the one from my physics professor. He claims to have sent them 2 weeks ago, yet not one single school has one on file. Okay, maybe some mail mishap is to blame. Or is it? I knew that my friend who applied last year had some hassles getting him to send his letters, but I'm finding out now that my friend had to give him envelopes 5 freakin' times! Finally, in November, my friend had him fax the letter in. How can I keep this from happening to me? I want to put pressure on him to send the letters right now, but I don't want to piss him off so that he'll deliberately screw me. I need this letter for one of my two science recommendations. I'm not a science major, and my other prereq professors are either retired, or no longer teach at my school.

 

[Bikini Princess]

My LOR's are going through my school's filing service. That way, the professors only have to print one letter, the service does the rest. I'd suggest doing this, JUST for this physics professor. If his own school's career center/service doesn't receive the letter, you'll know it's his fault.

 

[chemgirl]

What I did was tell my professors that I had to have them by a made up cut-off date. I said that if they were not in by that date my file would not be considered for admission because it was incomplete.

 

[Adcadet]

Originally posted by chemgirl
What I did was tell my professors that I had to have them by a made up cut-off date. I said that if they were not in by that date my file would not be considered for admission because it was incomplete.

I gave my profs a date by which I would have my stuff turned in, that way they knew that if they were any later than that, they'd be the limiting factor.

 

[Resident Alien]

Exploit your acting talents. Tell the prof that if his letters dont go out asap (you can put a date on it), it will mean a rejection for you.

 

[Doctor Octopus]

Originally posted by Bikini Princess
My LOR's are going through my school's filing service. That way, the professors only have to print one letter, the service does the rest. I'd suggest doing this, JUST for this physics professor. If his own school's career center/service doesn't receive the letter, you'll know it's his fault.

I wish my school had a letter service...

 

[Wahoo07]

You could always use a commercial letter service. My school used to have an internal letter service, but switched over to a commercial one. It works really well. www.interfolio.com There was a thread on this somewhere else, and it lists another one. You might want to try searching for it.

 

[Doctor Octopus]

thanks, I'll look into that

 

[KyGrlDr2B]

I didn't trust one of my profs because he was going out of town to India for the summer so I had him give them directly to me. What he did was put each letter in an envelope, write the school on the front, and sign across the seal in the back. I then sent them off in a manila envelope. It eliminated a lot of hassle--I didn't have to worry about where my letters were and yet I didnt actually see the letters. The rest of my profs sent them of themselves right away.

 

[Bikini Princess]

Originally posted by Doctor Octopus


I wish my school had a letter service...

I think even small schools do - they just don't advertise for it. If you school has anything like a career center, chances are they will do it for you.